


Sometimes a piece of sun

by queerly_it_is



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, Bedsharing, Blow Jobs, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Grief/Mourning, Hand Jobs, Hopeful Ending, Intercrural Sex, M/M, Nogitsune Trauma, Pack Dynamics, Recovery, post-3B
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-26
Updated: 2014-07-26
Packaged: 2018-02-10 10:52:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 39,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2022435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queerly_it_is/pseuds/queerly_it_is
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It doesn’t matter how Scott asks, Stiles always says he’s fine.</p>
<p>Scott’s not sure who’s supposed to believe it, or if Stiles just says it because it’s what he thinks he’s supposed to say. They do this now. They break and bleed and fall to bits, but so long as they say they’re okay then none of it’s really happening. It’s a nice idea. Just stick your fingers in your ears and hum really loud.</p>
<p>The problem is that it’s not working, and Scott’s terrible at pretending it is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sometimes a piece of sun

**Author's Note:**

> I have a lot of people to thank for this one. First to razz, for creating the beautiful artwork that inspired the fic, and then for drawing even more as it progressed. To kami and itsathinline for the beta. To jade for being my eternal headcanon buddy. To everyone on twitter who encouraged me as the fic refused to end. And to the mods who've done such a great job running the challenge. You're all fantastic.
> 
> You can go look at the phenomenal art razz created here: http://vulcains.tumblr.com/post/92926791355/my-second-submission-for-the-scilesreversebang-i
> 
> As far as warnings go, there's discussion of canonical character death, and some nightmare imagery, but other than that I think I tagged for everything. Please let me know if there's anything I forgot.

It doesn’t matter how Scott asks, Stiles always says he’s fine.

Scott’s not sure who’s supposed to believe it, or if Stiles just says it because it’s what he thinks he’s supposed to say. They do this now. They break and bleed and fall to bits, but so long as they say they’re okay then none of it’s really happening. It’s a nice idea. Just stick your fingers in your ears and hum really loud.

The problem is that it’s not working, and Scott’s terrible at pretending it is.

He can’t act like he doesn’t see how Stiles sometimes goes too still, frowning while he stares off at nothing and then shakes back to himself like he just woke up out of a nightmare. Or the way his mom looks at him when she thinks he won’t notice. How Lydia hardly ever smiles.

None of them are okay. Some of them aren’t here at all. Scott doesn’t know what to do about any of it.

On a good day he can get out of bed and go to school, try to help Stiles with all the catching up he’s probably still gonna be doing all through winter break. He can check in with Lydia and Malia and find a smile for whatever Kira feels like talking about, even if she looks like she feels sorry for him a lot of the time.

On the bad days he feels like someone’s cut off his arm or his leg, and he can’t stop himself turning in the halls when a girl laughs and it sounds like Allison, sits in class feeling hollowed out. He wakes up shouting and blinking away bad dreams, and doesn’t manage to do much of anything except take up space and grit his teeth, clench his hands into fists and try not to let his claws rip into his palms. Staying human isn’t his problem. Sometimes he thinks being less human would be a relief, but then he watches Malia working to recover all her misplaced pieces, and the shame nearly swallows him.

He spends so much time feeling like he’s being followed by all the things he’s not doing right, or enough, and then lying awake and getting angry at himself for feeling like that at all. He’s supposed to be helping and leading and instead he’s trapped in a circle, useless.

Things pass him by in weird stops and starts. Sometimes it takes forever for a day to go from start to finish, and then Scott loses track of a whole week. He keeps waiting for something to happen, more fighting and desperate scrambling to keep everyone safe, until he’s almost _hoping_ for it. When he’s got nothing to do his stomach drops and he’s sure he’s forgotten something, and the quiet feels too much like a deep breath before a scream. At some point the war got easier than the peace.

-|-

Stiles isn’t sick.

They were almost sure it was a game from the start, a way for the nogitsune to mess with Stiles and his dad, but still Scott sits in the waiting room and stands in the MRI room and paces in whatever corridor doesn’t have anyone around who’s gonna look at him funny if he slides down the wall with his head in his hands and sits on the floor, just to breathe, just for a minute. Until it sinks in.

Stiles isn’t sick. He’s not dying. Scott won’t have to—

“You’re sure?” Stiles’ dad asks the doctor, because Scott’s busy hugging Stiles until his ribs creak, and it’s not the same as last time. It’s the opposite of last time. Scott’s head isn’t full of _he’s dying he’s going to die what if I can’t save him what do I do without him he can’t die_ on a loop that twists and wraps around his throat, cuts off his air and stops his blood.

“You’re okay,” he says against Stiles’ neck, because Stiles is clinging to him just as hard but it’s not holding back the shaking. Or maybe Scott’s the one who’s shaking. Maybe they both are. So he says, “You’re okay, you’re okay,” until the words stop sounding real, until the trembling dies down. He’s never been more grateful for anything in his life, not ever.

“Yeah,” Stiles whispers, hoarse. He huffs out a shaky breath. “Fucking tricksters, huh?” he says, just loud enough so only Scott and maybe Stiles’ dad can hear it. The doctors look confused enough already.

When they pull apart Scott rubs the back of his hand over his nose and wipes his eyes on his sleeve, pretends he can’t see Stiles doing the same thing, or how Stiles’ dad slumps when Stiles catches him in a hug too, the crinkle of Stiles’ paper gown the only sound in the room.

The doctors can’t explain it, smiling to each other and talking about rare recoveries and once-in-a-career miracles. The three of them go find Scott’s mom at the nurse’s station, and she beams and grabs Stiles to hug him while they’re still trying to get the words out that he’s actually okay. She kisses Stiles’ forehead and cheeks, hugs his dad and then hugs Scott, and for some reason it makes his chest go tight all over again, how she rubs his back and how she smells the same as every memory he’s got of her.

He’s back to crying a little when she lets him go and orders them all out to celebrate, but Stiles bumps their shoulders together, aims a smile at him that’s not dim or fake like too many of them are now, and Scott realises he’s grinning too, hard enough that it hurts.

“So. That happened,” Stiles says, punching through the silence in the car. Scott feels like he’s left something heavy behind that he doesn’t know if he’ll need or miss later, and he can’t manage to say anything back. Stiles’ dad’s heartbeat is still skipping and lurching in places, and the relief that’s pouring off him smells like winter air, bright and sharp and clear.

“Yeah it did,” he finally breathes, and it turns into a shaky laugh. Stiles smiles at him again and knocks him on the thigh with a loose fist.

“I want ice cream,” Stiles says. “I think ice cream is called for here. And possibly pizza.” He nods to himself. “Pizza and ice cream.”

Stiles’ dad twists in his seat to look at them. “We can definitely do that.”

“I won’t even try and force the low fat frozen yogurt stuff on you,” Stiles tells him. “Or stop you sneaking extra toppings. Go to town. Today is hereby declared Diabetes and Heart Disease Day. Coronaries and insulin shots for everyone.”

The smile on Stiles’ dad’s face almost hides how bright his eyes still are when he turns back to start the engine. Scott leans into Stiles and feels Stiles rest more of his weight on him.

“I’m gonna get a shake too,” Stiles sighs, his head tipped back against the seat. He still looks a little dazed, eyes half-closed and a faint upward slant to his mouth, hands slack in his lap.

“Sounds good,” Scott says on autopilot, not looking away from him, trying to memorise every detail, slow the moment down and divide it into smaller pieces so it lasts longer, so they can just stay like this. He’d give anything to keep it like this.

Stiles’ head rolls slowly against the headrest to face Scott when they make a turn, and Scott’s belly swoops down near his feet on big wings that brush all along his ribs when their eyes catch. Stiles’ smile gets a little wider, fills the back of the car. Nothing can touch them like this – that’s the lie Scott wants to tell himself. Nothing can take this away.

They sit next to each other in a booth, pressed close enough to fit another person at either end, Stiles’ dad opposite them raising his eyebrows at the ice cream running down Stiles’ chin. They both get shakes and Scott lets Stiles swap them around, even though Stiles already drank most of his. Their knees knock under the table and Stiles’ foot is tapping on the floor, little movements that put things straighter on their hinges; it’s really Stiles, jittery and right there.

“Admit it,” he says, leaning into Scott’s shoulder. “My plans are the best.”

“Only if you don’t make yourself puke,” Stiles’ dad says, pointing at Stiles’ heaped-high bowl, little streaks of melting ice cream running down into splotches on the table.

Stiles just shrugs at him. “If you don’t throw up a little then did you even try?” and his dad rolls his eyes, rubs at his temple.

When Stiles starts digging into Scott’s ice cream with his spoon and an exaggerated I’m-being-sneaky look on his face, Scott slides the bowl closer to him and then shares a look with Stiles’ dad that slips into fondness too quick to notice whatever came before it, but not quite enough to hide the fear perched at the back of his eyes that hasn’t gone away yet. Maybe it won’t and they’ll just carry it forever, like matching scars.

“Okay,” Stiles says, wincing and bringing a palm to his forehead. “Brain freeze. Ow.”

Scott snorts and Stiles thumps him on the arm. “I’m suffering here, dude, you’re supposed to be on my team.”

“Then I guess I’d better save you from yourself,” he says, and snags his bowl back. Stiles tries to stop him by hooking his spoon on the lip of the bowl, and the spoon duel that happens next nearly tips the bowl off the table.

“Whoa, hey, boys,” Stiles’ dad says, and they both start a little, freezing with their spoons clacking together, suddenly remembering he’s sitting there. “Let’s try not to redecorate the place, huh?”

Scott looks at Stiles and raises his eyebrows to say _Truce?_

“Alright, alright, I give up,” Stiles says, slumping back in the seat and resting a hand on his belly. “The lack of chocolate was depressing me anyway.”

“There’s better flavours,” Scott tells him, even though they’ve been having this argument since they were ten and it’s not going away any time soon. Thinking about that now makes him smile.

-|-

Scott’s poking at his homework and doodling in his notebook, not getting much of anything done. His dinner’s gone cold with half of it still left. There’s a knock and he jumps.

“Hey,” Stiles says with a two-fingered wave. He’s leaning on the doorframe and he’s got his backpack by his feet. “Sorry. I figured you’d, y’know—” he holds his hands to the sides of his head, pointed up like ears “—hear me coming or something.”

“Guess I was distracted,” Scott says. He _should_ have heard Stiles walking up the stairs if not into the house. Stiles’ scent isn’t quite the same since the nogitsune, and sometimes Scott can miss him when he can’t see Stiles is there, but that’s no excuse. “How’d you get in anyway?”

Stiles smiles and pats his pocket “I have a key, remember?”

“Didn’t my mom take it?”

“She took one of them,” Stiles says, shrugging his way off the doorframe and into the room. “It’s always important to make backups, buddy.”

Scott sighs, “Fine, just don’t let my mom find out or she’ll probably change the locks.” She probably wouldn’t, actually. Not now, after everything. “Are you—” _Are you okay?_ He nearly asks, pointless again. “What’s up?”

“Aw, can’t I just want to spend time with my best bud?” Stiles asks, moving a pile of clothes from the chair to the floor so he can sit.

“It’s after nine on a school night and your dad let you go out?”

“I left him a note, it’ll be fine.” Stiles tells him, waving it off. “He was already asleep when I left, so.”

He’s looking at his fingers drumming on the arm of the chair instead of at Scott, and there’s obviously something he’s leaving out even if his heartbeat doesn’t change, but what’s new about that, really?

“So I can stay over?” Stiles asks, making pleading eyes at Scott like he doesn’t already know the answer.

Scott holds up his hands. “Sure,” he says, instead of the _anything_ that’s the on the tip of his tongue. Not because he wouldn’t mean it, but because he’d mean it too much.

“Awesome,” Stiles grins and hops out of the chair. He grabs his pack from by the door and drops it by the bed, then takes the mess of notes and books from next to Scott and dumps them on the chair. Scott just huffs and throws his pen onto the chair too. It’s not like he was getting anywhere anyway.

“So now what?” he asks, flopping onto his back and looking up at the ceiling. The bed dips when Stiles lays down next to him, then shakes while Stiles fidgets until he’s comfortable.

Stiles hums. “Nintendo? Movie? Snacking binge?”

“I vote Nintendo,” Scott says, smiling and looking over at him. “It’s been a while since we had video game night; I kind of miss watching you suck at Mario World.”

“That’s such a slandering of my fearsome skills I’m not even going to respond to it,” Stiles says, jabbing Scott in the side with a finger anyway. He sits up with a little groan and slaps a hand on Scott’s belly that makes him oomph as the air goes out of him. Stiles is smirking when Scott bats at him and leans up on his elbows. “C’mon, wolfboy, let’s see what you’ve got.”

They sit shoulder-to-shoulder on the edge of the bed, and Scott feels more like he fits into the space he’s occupying every time Stiles jostles him and yells advice at him or the screen all through Scott’s turn, fingers tapping blur-fast on the controller during his own, bottom lip pulled between his teeth and feet slapping against the floor. It’s comforting, having the sound and movement of Stiles in the room, watching him be the leading edge of the hurricane instead of the deadly-still eye like the nogitsune was.

His eyes start to droop, a yawn cracking his jaw. He leans against Stiles more, face turning into Stiles’ shoulder. The sound dies down when Stiles hits pause.

“Didn’t mean to keep you awake, old man,” Stiles says, nudging him gently.

“Ha ha,” Scott groans, straightening up again and shoving at Stiles’ leg while he rubs his eyes. Stiles flicks him on the kneecap, but lets Scott pull his legs onto the bed and lay back with his feet tucked under Stiles’ thigh. He yawns again, watching through squinted eyes while Stiles keeps playing. The flickering light from the screen changes the angles of Stiles’ face over and over, like a flipbook of sharp edges and softer places that are hard to see most of the time now.

His heavy eyelids drag shut all the way, but he can still hear Stiles muttering to himself, the tap of plastic buttons and a heartbeat other than his own. Everything’s okay. He can sleep for a while.

Scott wakes up to quiet, and he’s not aware enough to think how it can’t be normal to be scared by the silence of your own bedroom in the middle of the night. To get frightened by things when they _are_ normal. His hand comes down on the other side of the bed, but it’s cool, empty. The comforter’s been folded onto him, which probably means Stiles couldn’t wake him enough to get him underneath it properly. He didn’t mean to crash like that, and now Stiles isn’t here. There’s disorientation mixing with oily fear before he’s even on his feet.

The lamp is on and there’s a book lying pages-down on the chair by the bed. Scott shuts his eyes and listens, finds his mom’s soft snore and sleep-slow heartbeat, and then the sound of bare feet on the kitchen floor, a drawer opening and closing, the second pulse that can’t be anyone’s but Stiles’. The amount of relief that hits him in the gut is stupid, but the fear was stupid to begin with, so maybe it cancels out.

Stiles is making coffee and picking at a plate of leftovers when Scott pads into the kitchen, the smell of it filling the room. He stands and watches with a kind of helpless fascination while Stiles adds more sugar than will ever dissolve to the mug, the spoon clinking against the side. The microwave clock says _03:08_ when he sits down at the island.

“Remember when you said coffee tasted like sour mud?”

Stiles snorts. “Yeah, well, remember when sleep was a thing I did sometimes? Also I was eight, and you agreed with me.”

Scott shakes his head when Stiles holds the pot up as a question. “It was your idea to steal your dad’s thermos.”

“And you were an awesome lookout,” Stiles tells him, toasting him with the mug before he downs what has to be half of it and makes a face. “Yeah, still not great,” he says, looking down into the mug and wrinkling his nose. “I was a wise eight-year-old.”

“There’s a coffee stain in your dad’s office that sort of disproves that,” Scott says, folding his hands together on the counter and resting his chin on them. That was a few months before Stiles’ mom went into the hospital for the last time. Stiles wanted the thermos so he could learn to make his dad’s coffee the same way she did, ended up spilling it everywhere and burning his wrist pretty bad. Stiles’ dad bought a new machine for the Sheriff’s Station not long after that. Scott doesn’t know what happened to the thermos, but he doesn’t think he ever saw it again.

“Yeah, yeah,” Stiles sighs, throwing a cold cut at him. Scott catches it and eats it in one bite with an open-mouthed grin.

“You’re disgusting,” Stiles tells him. “I hope you know that.”

“Werewolf,” Scott says with his mouth full – _wurrwoff_. Stiles’ mouth twitches. “And says the guy adding coffee to his sugar.”

Stiles shrugs, refills his mug and stirs it half-heartedly. “If I get a cavity before the next disaster strikes I’ll happily pay my dentist. Oh and speaking of healthcare, your mom’s home.”

“Weak subject change,” Scott says, but lets it go anyway. “Does she know you’re here?”

Stiles nods around another gulp. “She came to check on you but you were busy snoring. I told her we had a school project and I’m staying over to work on it with you.”

“Did she believe you?” Scott asks, grabbing a piece of meatloaf off the plate. He chews and absently rearranges things on the kitchen island.

“Probably not,” Stiles admits. “It wasn’t my best work.”

“Well maybe if you got some sleep and went a little easier on the stimulants,” Scott says.

“Buzzkill,” Stiles says, walking past him into the living room. Scott sighs and follows him, turns a lamp on and sits on the other end of the couch.

Scott leans his head back, tiredness dragging at him.

“So are you gonna ask or not?”

He rolls his head against the couch and levers his eyes open, raises his eyebrows.

Stiles snorts. “You’ve been giving me a look since I got here. It’s killing you not asking why I showed up like this, isn’t it?”

Scott shrugs, not looking away from him. “You can come over whenever, for whatever reason, you know that,” he says. “And I didn’t ask ‘cause I didn’t think you wanted to talk about it.”

“I don’t,” Stiles says, gesturing at him. “Really, I’m good never talking about any of this stuff ever again, but you’re pouting at me like you’re all sad and disappointed and I can’t take it, so.” He blows a breath out through his mouth, drinks the last of his coffee and puts the mug down. “I had a fight with my dad.” When Scott doesn’t reply, he sighs. “It wasn’t even about anything. He just—sometimes he looks at me and it’s like—it’s like he’s waiting for me to say something, only I don’t know what I’m supposed to say, or it’s always the wrong thing, so it just makes me mad and then…” He shrugs. “I don’t know. We end up yelling. He found me sleeping on the couch the other night, for like, the third night in a row. I can’t sleep in my room; I just lie there staring at that blank wall, and every time I feel myself starting to fall asleep I just think what if I wake up somewhere else, y’know? What if I hurt someone? What if I don’t wake up at all?”

“I have nightmares,” Scott tells him without deciding to. “I dream I’m back in that big white room, and I can see you on the other side, but no matter how much I run I never get any closer. I dream about giving you the bite and watching while it kills you; you just turn to dust and blow away. I dream about Allison trying to tell me something but it’s like she’s underwater and I can’t hear her, even though I know it’s important, and when I try to talk to her, to tell her that I—my voice doesn’t work. I hear Lydia screaming and I don’t know what to do because I’m too scared to move. I’ve clawed through three sets of sheets in the last two weeks. I wake up shouting, some nights. It scares my mom.”

He feels out of breath when he stops talking, heart lodged in his throat. Stiles is looking over at him with pinched eyes, his hand flexing on the couch between them.

“I’m freaked out by flies now,” he offers. And then he laughs, a ridiculous, helpless, nothing’s-actually-funny kind of laugh, and the tension snaps and Scott’s laughing too, harder than he remembers in a long time, clutching Stiles’ arm and bent double, Stiles’ wheezing in his ear, both of them shaking with it. It goes on and on, empties them like air going out of a tire

“Oh man,” Scott breathes, wiping at his eyes, trying to sit up. His jaw’s aching and his cheeks are burning, his ribs feel bruised. “We’re really in trouble now, huh?” That sets them off again, Stiles’ laugh gone high-pitched, squeaky and breathless with his head butting into Scott’s chest and his hands balled in Scott’s shirt, shaking him back and forth. Scott’s trying to get his breath back while his shoulders twitch and his eyes fill up, and it hurts but it’s the best pain he’s ever felt.

They slump against each other, panting and red-faced. Stiles wipes at his eyes while Scott works his jaw. They’re both still smiling, light-headed, and he’s got no idea why any of that was funny. He kisses Stiles’ forehead, and Stiles ruffles his hair, hand resting on the back of his neck.

“I love you,” he says, because it’s the only thing that fits, the thing that feels the most real, looking at Stiles so close everything else is blurry.

“Yeah,” Stiles says, smiling. “You too.”

Under his skin, between layers and layers, Scott still wants. Wants to close the gap and kiss Stiles on the mouth, the cheek, the soft parts of his belly and the hollow at his neck. He wants Stiles to put his hands on him and leave bruises that won’t last, and it’ll be okay because bruises never last anyway. Scott wants everything they could do and say once there are shared spaces against their skin to hold them and keep them safe.

Right now, in this revolving universe room with its tiny lamp of a sun, he knows Stiles would let him, would kiss him back without even hesitating. He can see how it’d go and who they’d be at the end, all laid out like the panels of a comic strip, and it’s not scary now, the way questions can be. Some questions you ask over and over because you know the answer but you still want to hear it. He can wait to ask.

Scott lies out flat, tugs Stiles’ down until he’s tucked against him, between him and the couch, and it doesn’t matter that it’s cramped. Stiles’ breath smells of coffee and his skin smells like the same soap he’s been using for years. His hair tickles Scott’s nose and his hands are folded like paper sculptures against Scott’s chest.

“You think you can sleep?”

“Yeah,” Stiles sighs. “I think so. Maybe. I can try.”

“You won’t go anywhere,” Scott tells him, leaning their foreheads together and putting his feet up against Stiles’ so they won’t get cold. “And I’d find you anyway.”

A puff of air against his cheek. Stiles’ heart rapping on his knuckles where his hand rests against Stiles’ chest. “I know,” Stiles says, and Scott puts his arm over Stiles’ waist. They’re so close together the light can’t get in. There’s no way to prove Stiles isn’t smiling when he falls asleep.

-|-

 “You know you don’t need to do this,” Deaton tells him. Scott’s been coming by after school and sometimes on Saturdays to help out. “I don’t expect you here every day. Not if you have other things you need to focus on. You should take more days off, maybe sleep in once in a while.”

“I know,” he says, wiping at his forehead and looking at the scrubbed-clean cage in front of him. The dog in the next cage over watches him with its head tilted. “But I like coming here, being useful. It’s—I don’t know. Comforting.”

“Oh?”

Scott leans against the worktop. Deaton’s watching him like he’ll stand there all day, until Scott figures out what he’s trying to say. He’s always liked that Deaton stands like the building will wear away around him before he lets anything move him. He envies being that solid, unshakeable, even if it’s just on the outside.

“Yeah,” he says. “I can sweep a floor or clean a cage or reorganise a cabinet, and I—I feel like I’ve done something bigger than that.”

“Making the world less… messy,” Deaton says. “One work surface at a time?”

He smiles. “Probably doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it?”

Deaton shrugs. “Makes sense to me. It’s good to remember things can always be cleaned up, made better, as long as there’s someone who’ll put the work in. Not every important effort is battling evil spirits or rogue werewolves; the small things tend to add up more than people realise.”

Scott nods. “Right. And it helps me think, sometimes. Or not think. I can just focus on what I’m doing here, one job at a time, instead of—everything else.”

Deaton smiles at him again, too understanding. “Well I’m certainly not going to complain.” He wipes a finger over the counter. “I don’t think it’s ever been so clean in here.”

“I don’t know how you run this place on your own,” Scott says, nodding at the cages or at the clinic in general.

“I don’t think I do,” Deaton says, giving him a look. “Not really. Do I?”

Scott smiles, only feeling a little awkward. “I guess not. It’s the least I can do anyway, after you helped us save Stiles and got stabbed by an oni and everything. Plus all the help you gave us before that.”

He’s not sure what the look Deaton’s giving him now means. “Scott, you don’t owe me anything. I hope you know that.”

He shrugs, fiddles with the bottle of disinfectant spray. “We did kind of drag you back into this after you retired. You almost got killed helping us more than once. Probably not what you expected when you hired me for an after school job.”

“Maybe not,” Deaton says, “but, Scott… I didn’t retire because I wanted to. I was the Hales’ emissary, and I didn’t—” Scott looks at him when he breaks off with a sigh. Deaton’s face is pained, his mouth drawn tight and a crease between his eyebrows. His eyes are far away.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s more than duty,” Deaton says. “Being an emissary, I mean. It’s more than a responsibility or even a calling. It’s… it’s sacred, in a way, though that might not be the right word. It takes more than knowing about plants or spells or werewolf lore. It comes from a deeper place than that. My ‘retirement’ was the result of a failure that I can never make up for. It was my—my role to protect and advise, but I let them down. They were like family, and I failed them.” He smiles, sadness layered over old pain, or the other way around, like paint flaking away from stone. “I’m not telling you this to burden you with it. I just want you to know… you’ve helped me too, more than—” He shakes his head. “It’s what you do, Scott. It’s your gift. Never doubt that.”

“Helping?”

“Beyond that,” Deaton says, like he’s so sure. It’s nice that someone is. He smiles. “You give people hope.”

-|-

He goes over to Stiles’ house on a Friday night, walks into his room and finds Stiles slumped over his desk. He’s surrounded by textbooks and notebooks and loose bits of paper. Some of it is definitely for school, but there are other things: a sketch of the nemeton, a sheet with _STUFF TO TEACH MALIA_ scribbled on it and rows of post-its along the bottom where he’d run out of room. A ball of red string under the desk. Stiles sees him and shuts a spiral notebook that’s got something about anti-possession charms on the open page, then tosses it into a drawer.

 “More studying?” Scott asks, since a redundant question is the safest.

“Yeah,” Stiles sighs, poking at one of the stacks of notes. It’s tall enough that it wobbles. “Lotta catching up to do. I have like, three make-up tests next week.”

“You can do it,” he says, not like encouragement, just a statement of fact. “You need help?”

Stiles sighs, long and loud. He pushes his fingers through his hair and leans back in the chair while he swivels back and forth. His hair’s long enough now that it flops forward a little, and Scott can smell the shampoo on his fingers over the sour-tired scent of the rest of him, and the acrid, cold coffee in the mug by his computer. There are no empty Adderall bottles lying around, which is something at least.

“No. Or, yeah, probably.” He winces. “God I don’t know. My brain’s turning to clay here. I can’t tell if I’m getting anywhere.”

“Okay,” Scott says, sitting on the floor with his back against the bed. “Pick a topic and gimme your notes. I’ll quiz you.”

They get through most of the stuff Stiles’ needs to know for Econ, and Stiles only makes two deadpan comments about stabbing the teacher before Scott gets him to take a break. He doesn’t know how long Stiles was hunched over trying to cram for three tests at once, but he’s guessing it wasn’t just a few hours. If he thought Stiles would let him he’d lead him downstairs, sit him at the kitchen table, and not let him leave until he ate some real food and drank something that wasn’t mostly caffeine. Until Stiles doesn’t smell like old ink and stale air and his eyes have the focus they’re supposed to. Until he accepts that he’s not allowed to treat himself like a low priority. But Stiles won’t let him do all those things, so Scott settles for opening the window and getting him a glass of water, then giving him puppy eyes until he drinks all of it.

“That’s emotional manipulation,” Stiles says.

“Yep,” Scott answers. “I’m manipulating you out of dehydration, deal with it.”

“You’re like a mom who’s gone mad with power. You’re the alpha mother hen,” Stiles tells him, and Scott rolls his eyes. “I could be in here trying to figure out how to shut down the nemeton. Y’know, that thing that’s gonna keep drawing in all the creepy and crawly shit that insists on trying to kill us? You’re interfering in a vital mission, Scott.”

Scott rolls his eyes, even though he’s sure there’s something about that in all the paper around the room. “You’re in my pack,” he says, letting himself enjoy saying it for a minute. “I’m supposed to make sure you’re not going to need an IV because you skipped eating for three days or something.”

Stiles snorts, says “Dude, you know how much time I could save by just hooking myself up to—” and then, “Okay, jeez, never mind, no self-medicating with nutrient bags,” when Scott raises his eyebrows and glares. “I lost track of time.”

“I know,” Scott sighs, “and I’m not trying to—just try and take better care of yourself, okay?”

“Fine,” Stiles says, throwing up his hands. “Wouldn’t wanna void the warranty.”

He frowns. “What does that mean?”

Stiles looks at him, blank in a way that makes the hair on the back of Scott’s neck rise. “It was a joke,” he says flatly.

“No,” Scott says. “It wasn’t.” Stiles’ jaw is clenched like a bear trap and there’s nothing in his eyes at all. “If you don’t want to tell me, then—”

“I don’t know how much of this is me,” Stiles says, a branch snapping in the quiet. He looks down at his hands, at his body, before he glances up at Scott again. “God, Scott, I appeared out of the freaking floor in a wad of bandages. I mean, what if—what if we killed the old me and this is just a Xerox copy? Or if some part of me was still in my—in that other body and I’m—I’m Stiles but I’m not Stiles. I don’t _feel_ new, but where did I – this, me, _it_? – come from?” His breathing’s getting harsher and his face is pale. He looks afraid, smells afraid, heart flinging itself into his ribs, and Scott’s stomach flips because he’s not sure what to do.

He stands up and takes a step closer. “Stiles—”

“I _remember_ everything,” Stiles blurts, looking up at Scott from the chair, and his eyes are wide with fear now, fear and confusion and too many things he’s been forcing himself to swallow for who knows how long. “But did I—did I really do any of it? Which memories are mine? Does my whole life belong to someone else and I’m just here like some kind of—”

“Whoa, hey,” Scott breaks in, moving across the room in maybe two big steps and kneeling by Stiles’ legs, catching one of his hands out of the air and putting his other one on Stiles’ knee. “Just slow down and breathe for a second, okay?”

Stiles’ fingers squeeze Scott’s hand hard enough to hurt, little bones creaking, and he’s got his eyes clenched shut while he sucks air through his nose and lets it out through his mouth.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Stiles says in a pressed-thin kind of voice. He’s not opening his eyes and he’s still gripping Scott’s hand. Scott can feel Stiles’ bitten nails, uneven and sharp in places, digging into his palm.  His pulse is throbbing a little in the tips of his fingers. He squeezes back.

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” is what comes out of Scott’s mouth first. “You went through something nobody should have to deal with, and now it’s catching up with you.” He grips Stiles’ knee. “You’re gonna be alright. Everything’s gonna be fine.”

“Is it?” Stiles asks, looking down at him. There’s sweat shining on his skin and he’s still too pale. “Scott, I—the stuff I did—”

“That wasn’t you,” Scott tells him. “I know you, and that wasn’t you. That couldn’t ever be you.”

Stiles scoffs, an ugly twist working along his face. “Felt like me. My mouth moving. My hands setting traps and building bombs and sticking a sword through my best friend. God, all those people.” His jaw clenches and he pulls another uneven breath through his nose. “Allison.”

That starts a hollow twinge in his chest, like loose rock falling, but he still says, “None of it was your fault.” He’ll keep saying it if he has to, tack it onto every sentence for the rest of his life, hammer it like a peg into the air.

“I’m sorry,” Stiles says, and it’s a lightning jump, one sharp hit to the next. He sounds young and scared, eyes wide and wet, and Scott can feel the desperate need to make it better climbing up a ladder in his throat. “Scott, I’m—god, I’m so fucking sorry.”

“Don’t,” Scott says, has to force it out because it’s stuck in his windpipe. He doesn’t know when Stiles slid out of the chair and onto the floor with him, or when either of them started crying, but there are tears burning tracks down his face and he can see them shining on Stiles’ cheeks too. “You don’t—you don’t have anything to be sorry about.”

Stiles doesn’t say anything. Maybe he can’t make his voice work. Then he coughs or chokes and says, “It chose me,” in a strained voice that can’t decide who it’s aimed at. Scott can hear it circling around them, caught on the air.

He shakes his head. “I don’t—”

“It chose me,” Stiles says again. “It _liked_ me. Saw something in me, I guess. Kindred spirits.” He scoffs, rubs at his mouth. “Y’know what’s funny? I said no when Peter offered me the bite ‘cause I was afraid I’d end up like him. Because I didn’t want to be a murderer. Well, I guess that’s more ironic than funny.”

“You’re not a murderer,” Scott says, hating that he has to and that it’s not enough, hating that the words feel like ground glass and ashes in his mouth and how Stiles’ face is closed off, bolted shut from the inside. “And I don’t care what it thought it saw. I see you too, okay? Better than some spirit that used you like a weapon. I see _you_.”

“You couldn’t tell,” Stiles grates out. “None of you could tell it wasn’t me, not at first. What does that say?”

“That it tricked us,” Scott tells him. “That it lied and it was good at it.” _That I failed you, every time it looked at me and I didn’t see it, I failed you._ “That’s all. Stiles, you’re not like that thing. Please just trust me? Trust yourself.”

Stiles’ throat clicks as he swallows. “I want to,” he says. His eyes land on Scott’s. “And I do trust you. I do. Even if you didn’t listen.”

Scott frowns. “When?”

“When Noshiko told you how to make it stop.”

It takes him a second to get there, not because he doesn’t remember but because he doesn’t want to understand. “Stiles, she told me to kill you.”

“Yeah,” Stiles says. “I’m wondering if maybe you should’ve listened to her. Maybe if you had then—”

“I never would have done it,” Scott tells him, blurts it as if it’s the last thing he’ll ever say. “No matter what it made you do, I never would have…Stiles, I couldn’t do that. Even if it had been you, really you and not that thing. If you’d had a choice about any of it, I still wouldn’t have. There’s no way. I couldn’t.” His words run out, and he’s just confessed something he wonders if he should be ashamed of: the open secret of how far he’d go, if it came down to it.

It’s not about counting the lines he’d cross, trying to make up for every one with something else, like a big balancing act between who he wants to be and who he’s afraid of turning into. The truth is he’d rather be wrong and let it kill him than risk losing Stiles again.

Stiles’ expression is a broken mess of pain now, looking at Scott with something that cuts to see. It might be defeat. “I know,” he says. “I know you wouldn’t. And I think that’s what really scares me.”

Scott puts his hand on top of Stiles’, waits until he’s sure Stiles will hear him before he says, “She didn’t die because of you. She didn’t die because of Lydia, or me. She died because an oni stabbed her – because she chose to fight for the people she loved, and because she wanted to protect her friends. Just like you when the nogitsune possessed you.” A tremor creeps into his voice and he shoves it back. He wants the tingling ache that tells him his veins are turning black, wants the hurt in Stiles to be a physical thing he can draw out like poison. He wants to feel pain that isn’t this, always this. “She died because—because she was a hero, and sometimes heroes fall. And the last thing she did was save the rest of us. If it wasn’t for her we’d probably all be dead, along with who knows how many other people. No matter what it cost, we can’t second-guess that.”

“How’re you doing this?” Stiles asks, shaky, staring at him. “How’re you this strong all the time?”

It’s not a laugh that comes out of his mouth, just air with no room as his chest tries to cave in. “I’m really not,” he says, fighting a losing battle with the itch behind his eyes and the downward twist his mouth’s trying to make. “I want to be, I just—I’m not.”

Stiles sniffs, rubs his blotchy-red face on his sleeve. “Doing better than me,” he says.

“You’re doing fine,” Scott tells him, squeezes his hand. “You’re here. We can deal with the rest.”

“Yeah, well,” Stiles says, “same to you.”

Scott tries to piece his expression back together, tries not to imagine it as putting up a wall brick by brick. “Sorry I’m not better at this.”

Stiles frowns, shoves at him. “You know you take on too much, right? One day you’re gonna have some kinda massive breakdown and then we’re all screwed.”

He snorts. “Don’t worry about me. Worry about you.”

“Hypocrite,” Stiles huffs with a quirk to his mouth. He looks around, like the room’s changed on him. “Hey, can we get up off this floor now? My knees are going numb.”

“How much feeling do you usually have in your knees?” Scott asks as he pushes to his feet, wonders for a second if helping Stiles up with a hand under his arm will seem like he thinks Stiles is weak or fragile, and then doing it anyway. Stiles’ hand grips his shoulder and then he’s up, tall and broad as he never notices himself being. It takes conscious effort to let go of him.

Stiles sits on the end of the bed, scrubs his palms over his face. He smells like rain, or the air after it’s been raining for a long time, the break in the clouds when the world stops being gray. Scott sits next to him, hands smoothing the sheets on the corner.

“Maybe you should talk to someone,” he suggests, gentle as he can.

Stiles snorts, not looking at him. “You mean like therapy? We already tried the rubber room stuff, Scott. It didn’t exactly improve things. And I don’t think there are a lot of licensed therapists who deal in the effects of trickster possession.”

“There’s Morrell. Or Deaton maybe,” he points out, but Stiles shakes his head.

“Morrell’s pep talks have kinda lost their shine since her whole ‘here’s how I’m planning to euthanize you’ thing. Group therapy was weird anyway; all those eyes ticking around.”

“We could find someone else. There has to be someone who—”

“I don’t know if I could do it,” Stiles says quickly, glancing at him and then away. “Talk to a stranger about—everything. Even if they knew about all the weird supernatural crap. I just don’t want someone else screwing around in my head, y’know? It’s enough of a mess in here already. ”

“You don’t have to,” Scott tells him. “I just thought, if it helps…”

“You help,” Stiles says. “I know it might be hard to tell, what with the regular freaking out and all, but you do. You and the others.”

Scott nudges him, smiles. “But I don’t know what I’m doing, remember?”

Stiles smiles back, just about. “You’re not so bad. You pulled me out of there.”

He shrugs. “It was Lydia’s idea.”

“Yeah,” Stiles nods. “A-plus teamwork on that one. But that’s what I mean. Who’s got the best track record of saving me, huh?”

“You don’t need saving,” Scott says. “You just need time. We all do. And I can’t do this without you.”

Stiles snorts. “Please, as if I’d let you?”

He lifts a hand to tap his knuckles against Stiles’ shoulder, rests it on his back for a second. “I’m proud of you. Did I tell you that yet?”

Stiles makes an over-the-top thinking face. “Y’know, I don’t think you did.”

“Oh, well I should probably save it then,” he says. “For a special occasion.”

“Hey, what’s more special than a study session that ends with emotional turmoil?” Stiles asks, waving a hand at the room around them. He leans back, tilts his head to watch Scott. “I’m proud of you too,” he says. It’s not what Scott was expecting, because he’s trying so hard not to expect anything, and now there’s a lump in his throat and too much crammed into his chest. “For—god, for everything. For keeping going. Keeping all of us going, no matter—”

“No matter who we leave behind?”

“No matter how much it hurts,” Stiles says. “You can do this. You can, okay? And I’m really proud of you for trying.”

“Thanks,” he says, swallowing, letting go of his breath like a balloon that bumps against the ceiling.

“Don’t mention it,” Stiles says, the way people wave off thanks for small favours, not for hands that stop you drowning. He flops down flat and sighs, “No more studying today. I surrender to the C-minus.” He drops an arm off the end of the bed, grabs a piece of paper from the floor and waves it like a flag before he lets it go. He raises his head enough to ask Scott, “You’re staying over, right?”

“Sure,” he says. “I should probably call my mom and tell her though.” She won’t mind. The first thing she’ll ask will be, _Is Stiles okay?_ and then, _Are you okay?_ and then, _Are you sure?_

“Awesome,” Stiles says. “Dad said something about spaghetti, which means there’ll probably be enough to feed twelve people. He pretends not to understand portions when it comes to pasta so he has an excuse to eat leftovers for three days.”

“Spaghetti sounds good,” Scott says, lying down next to him. The smell of Stiles’ sheets drifts up around him, and part of him wants to roll around until they smell like him too. “Wanna go see if he needs any help?” he asks, a little desperate-sounding, but that might just be in his head.

Stiles shrugs, or tries to lying on his back. “Why not. He usually burns the sauce anyway.”

They eat in the living room, sprawled in chairs with bowls of spaghetti. The sauce is only a little burnt. Stiles’ knee bounces while he eats, bowl balanced in one hand and the other on the TV remote, flicking channels so fast Scott doubts he’s even paying attention. There’s a string of spaghetti connecting his bowl to his mouth.

“Would you just pick something? Please?” Stiles’ dad groans. “You’ve gone through every channel twice already.”

Stiles settles on a black and white monster movie from the 50s. Scott’s not really sure what’s happening. It involves giant crabs.

“See?” Stiles says, muffled around a mouthful of pasta, pointing his fork at the screen. “It could be worse. At least we’ve never been attacked by seafood.”

“You’re getting cheese on the carpet,” Stiles’ dad says, like he knows it’s a lost cause. Scott nudges Stiles’ bowl-holding hand so it’s underneath his fork.

After the giant crab monsters are defeated, they split the dish washing between them, debating whether crab monsters could actually be a thing. Stiles’ dad washes, Stiles dries, and Scott puts things away. He moves automatically, doesn’t get a single drawer or cabinet wrong. He reminds Stiles about the time he tried to get out of doing the dishes by saying he was allergic to dish soap, and Stiles comes back with the time Scott dyed his and his mom’s laundry pink. He’d defiantly worn pink everything for two weeks, until his mom caved and took over laundry duty again.

“This isn’t giving me hope for when you two go off to college,” Stiles’ dad says, scrubbing at a pan. There’s a pause where they look at each other, expressions saying, _Oh yeah_. It’s not right that normal life can sneak up on them that well. Scott’s not used to looking that far ahead anymore.

“Don’t worry, daddio,” Stiles says. “I promise I’ll bring all the laundry home, just to make you feel better.”

“Ah, I raised a generous son,” Stiles’ dad says, shaking his head. “Go on, I’ll finish up here. Just keep the noise down; some of us like to _sleep_ on weekends.”

Stiles gives him a two-fingered salute, and then drags Scott off by the arm. They make a half-assed attempt at tidying Stiles’ room, shoving piles of paper into stacks around the desk, and then drop onto the bed.

“You and your dad seem better,” he says when there’s a lull between them.

“Yeah,” Stiles sighs. “I think he still expects me to disappear, some days, but… yeah. We’re better. He doesn’t get weird about me driving, and I haven’t seen him looking up locksmiths in case he needs to put more bolts on the door to stop me sleepwalking in, oh, at least a week?”

“My mom calls me in the middle of her shift,” Scott tells him. “It used to be the other way around. I’d worry about her getting hurt working in the ER, or ask whether she’d had time to eat or if I should take her something. Now she calls me, even when I know she’s busy and she’s not supposed to be using her phone, to make sure there’s not a ‘werewolf emergency’.”

Stiles huffs, the wobble translating through the mattress. “Pretty sure your mom is supposed to worry about you, dude.”

“Yeah,” he says, “but it’s meant to be stuff like whether I set the stove on fire or left the front door unlocked, not… I don’t know. If I’m out getting beat up or shot or ritually sacrificing myself.”

“Well,” Stiles says, considering. “At least we’re not boring.”

He falls asleep easier than he would’ve expected that night, listening to the little rasp Stiles’ breathing gets when he sleeps on his stomach. When Stiles starts to mutter and kick, Scott’s got a hand on his back before he’s even aware of moving, talking in a low murmur, telling him he’s safe, that he’s not alone. Stiles settles and doesn’t even wake up.

-|-

When he wanders bleary-eyed into the bathroom in the morning, Stiles is staring himself down in the mirror.

“Oh, hey,” he says, clearing his throat to make his voice work. “Didn’t know you were—” He notices the hair clippers in Stiles’ hand. Suddenly he’s wide awake. “Uh. You okay?”

“Yeah,” Stiles hums absently, doesn’t look away from the mirror. He’s still in his underwear, and Scott watches his shoulders move as he breathes, sees how his feet are braced. His eyes find the places on Stiles’ body that should have scars but don’t. He’s looking at Stiles in profile, but he can see the nervous way Stiles rolls his lips between his teeth and the frowny dip of his eyebrows.

 “I thought you were done with the buzzcut?” he asks, making sure it comes out sounding just idly curious. He leans his bare back against the wall, scratches his ankle with the toes of his other foot.

“I am,” Stiles says, running his free hand through his sleep-messy hair. “I was. I just…” he trails off, fingers tugging out the length of his hair from the top of his head. “It’s stupid,” he sighs, dropping his hand.

“Tell me anyway,” Scott says, again like he doesn’t care, like he’s not holding back from pushing into Stiles’ space and staying there until he’s _sure_ Stiles is alright.

Stiles glances at him then goes back to the mirror. He sighs. “I know it’s just me in here,” he says, prods at his temple with a finger. “I know Isaac stuck the nemeton box in one of Argent’s safes until we can figure out how to destroy it.” He tips his chin up a little. “This is the real me,” he says, and Scott can’t help listening to see if his heartbeat changes. It doesn’t.

“But…”

“But I still _feel_ —” Stiles shakes his head, looks down at the clippers. “I figured maybe if I didn’t look the same, y’know?” He snorts. “Change the host. Doubt a haircut would’ve worked then, but still. Power of suggestion, right? Mind over matter. I’d go with a tattoo if my dad wouldn’t kill me and needles didn’t creep me out.” He drops his head back between his shoulders, blows out a breath. “God, I just wanna stop feeling _temporary_. Like I don’t really own any of this. I wanna not sit still and think ‘if I try and move my hand is it really gonna move? If I try and talk will it be my voice that—’” He rubs at the side of his neck, turns to look at Scott again. “Told you it was stupid.”

Scott swallows. He remembers being hunched in his bathtub, watching claws grow out of his fingers and what it was like waking up somewhere miles from home, not knowing how he got there. He remembers being afraid all the time of turning into something else, looking in the mirror and wondering who he was seeing. He still feels like that, sometimes, and thinking about Stiles going through it…

“It’s not stupid,” he says, has to clear his throat again. “Whatever it takes to make you feel okay, we’ll do it. Anything. I promise.”

Stiles’ smile is weak and crooked. He holds out the clippers. “That mean you feel like giving me a hand?”

He gets Stiles to sit in the tub and lean forward while he perches on the end. Stiles bares the back of his neck and Scott’s belly takes a sharp turn. He brushes his thumb over the topmost bump of Stiles’ vertebrae and smiles when Stiles’ shivers and swats at him.

“You’re sure about the buzzcut?” he says. “I could just do the sides. You’d look good as a punk. Maybe a mohawk?”

“Ha ha,” Stiles says, flipping him off without turning around. “No getting creative, okay? This isn’t like that time with the gum.”

Scott had forgotten that until now. He grins. “I promise I won’t try and shave my initials into your hair again.”

“Better not,” Stiles mutters. “It took weeks for it to stop looking like I had some kinda lopsided smiley face on the side of my head.”

“I had to get you back for all the times you spat your gum into the air and it landed on me instead of you.”

 “What, the gum already in my hair wasn’t enough?”

“It was your one versus like, my eight, so no,” he says, shrugging. “And it would’ve looked better if you’d hadn’t kept trying to turn to see it in the mirror.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Stiles says. “You were lucky my dad confiscated the clippers and all the scissors or I would’ve gone for your eyebrows in revenge. I thought about trying to take them off with duct tape. Now c’mon, this tub’s cold.”

Scott flicks the clippers on and the steady electric hum fills the room, only interrupted by the sound it makes cutting through Stiles’ hair. He runs a hand up the back of Stiles’ head as he goes, making sure it’s even. Hair falls down Stiles’ back and onto his shoulders in clumps like feathers. When he bends Stiles’ ears to get at the hair around them he can see Stiles trying not to laugh. The light coming through the window makes Stiles’ skin look paler and his moles look darker next to Scott’s bare legs, braced either side of the tub with Stiles in the V between them.

Once the back’s done he brushes the loose hair away, quick touches across Stiles’ shoulders and down his back, over his neck. There’s not enough room for them both to crouch in the tub, so he tells Stiles to sit on the edge while he stands on the floor. Stiles looks up at him, face level with his stomach, and Scott tries to ignore his face getting warm, how bright Stiles’ eyes are and how thick his lashes are when he closes them, Stiles’ long throat bared and the amount of trust on his face.

He works backwards through the rest of Stiles’ hair, sweeping his fingers over Stiles’ head as he goes. Stiles twitches every now and then when Scott’s nails scratch against his scalp or when Scott has to pause to sweep away more hair, trying to be gentle without lingering.

There are a few seconds when he’s finished and he doesn’t want to turn the clippers off, because Stiles looks peaceful like this, face aimed up and his eyes closed, and once he’s done the moment will break like fragile china. Before he started, Scott thought it’d be like peeling away wallpaper to find the older layers underneath – that Stiles would look like he did back at the start of the year and in the years before that, but he doesn’t. His face is sharper in places, and he’s grown more into the shape of himself, filled out. Scott wants to tell him, get him to see himself the way Scott does, but the words clunk against each other awkwardly in his mouth.

The silence in the bathroom when he finally shuts off the clippers is jarringly loud, all the other little noises rushing back in to fill the space. Birds chirping outside, the low rush of a car driving past, Stiles’ dad moving around downstairs.

Stiles’ eyes flutter open and he waggles his eyebrows, runs his hand over his head. “How do I look?”

“The same,” Scott says, smiling. “And different.” He shrugs. “You look like you. You always look like you.”

“Helpful,” Stiles says, deadpan. “No initials, right?”

“No initials. I thought about ‘if found return to…’ but it wouldn’t fit.”

“So you’re saying my head isn’t big enough?” Stiles asks.

“It’s just the right size,” Scott says diplomatically, and Stiles laughs.

“Thank you Goldilocks,” he says, headbutts Scott lightly in the belly.

It’s not an accident when he leans down for the kiss, even if Scott’s not sure exactly why he decides to do it.

Stiles is smirking up at him, colour in his cheeks and his fingers rapping on the side of the tub. He can see Stiles’ chest expanding and contracting, the wingbeat of his pulse in his throat and the shadows puddling above his collarbones that still stick out a little more than they should, like his ribs and his hipbones. Almost in slow motion he sees Stiles close the gap between not understanding and realising what he’s about to do, watches Stiles choose not to move away in the flit of his eyes across Scott’s face and how he tips his chin up, in the barely-there, curious squint of Stiles’ attention aimed totally at him. He thinks, _This is happening; we’re doing this_ , as stubbornly as he can, and takes it as a sign when nothing tries to stop them.

Stiles’ lips part for him, against him, soft skin bitten rough in places. Scott puts a hand on Stiles’ shoulder that ends up cupping his neck and Stiles’ fingers wrap around the backs of his thighs, stopping just below his shorts, holding him in place like he needs to. His breath stutters when Stiles’ teeth scrape his bottom lip. Stiles groans at the flicker of Scott’s tongue on the corner of his mouth, opens up a fraction wider and draws him in, warm and wet.

“Uh, wow,” Stiles breathes into the small space between them when they pull apart. His thumb is resting on the hinge of Stiles’ jaw now, fingers on the pink-stained skin at the nape of his neck.

“Yeah,” he says. Stiles’ scent is heady, and it’s hard to focus on anything else. Stiles smiles at him, and Scott smiles back, feeling like the ground’s more solid underneath him, or they’ve only just stepped onto it and it’s decided not to collapse under them. Stiles stands up, and Scott takes a step back just in time to stop them bumping heads. He watches Stiles walk over to the mirror, the little pause Stiles tries to cover by brushing hair off himself before he looks, the pleased tilt of his mouth when he finally does.

“Okay,” Stiles nods, claps his hands together, smiles like he’s about to jump and hit the ceiling. “Breakfast.”

-|-

“What the hell happened?” is the first thing Stiles’ dad asks, pulling him aside as soon as Stiles is out of earshot.

“Nothing,” Scott says, quickly. “He’s fine, I promise.”

“Fine?” Stiles’ dad repeats. “He shaves off all his hair and you’re telling me he’s fine?”

“I did it,” Scott tells him. “He asked me to. It’s—he’s just trying to feel… I don’t know. In control again? It’s not a bad thing.”

Stiles’ dad sighs, shakes his head. “I never know what to do,” he says. “He won’t talk to me. I’ve tried, and sometimes he acts like nothing even happened to him, but other times he—he just won’t talk to me.”

“He will,” Scott says. “He knows you want him to be okay. I think he feels bad for making you worry.”

“I’m gonna worry no matter what he—” Stiles’ dad starts, then he slumps, pinches the bridge of his nose. “You’re sure this isn’t some kind of a red flag?”

“Yeah,” Scott says, trying to sound reassuring. He thinks about the kiss and everything Stiles told him yesterday, about how they got here. He tries to imagine where they’re going to end up. “I’m sure.”

Stiles is opening a pack of bacon and doing a bad job pretending he wasn’t eavesdropping when they go into the kitchen. Scott stands next to him at the counter, takes the pan and the oil out of the cabinet and nudges their shoulders together, hands things to Stiles just so their fingers will touch. Stiles doesn’t dodge his eyes, and he smiles down at the bacon sizzling in the pan when Scott brushes away some leftover hair that might or might not be on his neck.

“I’m being allowed bacon?” Stiles’ dad asks as he sits at the table. “It’s not my birthday is it?”

“You get two pieces,” Stiles says, pointing the spatula at him. “I’m watching you.”

Scott makes himself busy pouring juice, puts the carton back and uses the time facing the inside of the fridge to get his grin under control.

“What’s the plan for today, boys?” Stiles’ dad asks after they’ve eaten, refilling his coffee.

“Don’t know,” Stiles says, pulling his last piece of toast apart and eating it in chunks. He looks at Scott like he always does: no more than two steps away from a dangerous idea. He smirks. “Anything could happen.”

-|-

They’ve sort of divided helping Malia adjust to her human life into different areas between them without ever really talking about it.

Lydia’s taken over her tutoring. Scott thinks it’s a combination of Lydia generally being the smartest person in the pack and the time she caught Stiles trying to explain compound fractions with gummy worms and a kitchen knife. He thinks she’s trying to teach Malia how to pick out clothes she likes too, and Malia’s style tends to be simpler stuff that won’t limit her motion, mixed with fun socks. Stiles got her a pair of Wile E. Coyote ones that she wears at least twice a week.

Scott does his best to help her control her shift, while spending most of the time worried he’s going to get it wrong because he doesn’t know if there’s special shapeshifter vocabulary or something he’s supposed to be using. He wants to ask Derek for tips, feels like he’s giving vague directions in a town he barely knows, but they can’t run the risk of Peter getting involved. It doesn’t seem right to put Malia through dealing with him until she’s got more of a handle on everything. It doesn’t seem like a good idea to involve Peter in anything, ever.

What he’s doing is apparently working though, since Malia can control her claws and fangs and the blue glow of her eyes almost every time now. He can’t quite convince her not to use them to scare people who piss her off, but the social lessons are Stiles’ thing anyway. “She hasn’t eaten anyone yet,” Stiles tells him with a shrug, and that’s apparently enough. Stiles does talk to her after she nearly breaks some guy’s nose in the middle of the hall for telling Kira her grades are only good because her dad’s a teacher, but it’s half-hearted and he beams at her through most of it, and by the end it turns into him saying, “Just knock them down instead, okay? Broken bones are too much evidence.” Scott saw the look on Kira’s face, so he doesn’t try and interfere in that one.

Scott knows she wants to get back her ability to turn fully into a coyote, that she misses it, and he tries to help her through the frustration of not being able to do it. He can’t imagine wanting to live as an animal, not all the time, but sometimes when she talks about what it was like he feels a stir in his chest at the idea that makes his eyes glow red and his fingers feel too blunt. Stiles likes to joke that it’s the call of the wild. Scott’s not sure he’s wrong.

They go for long runs through the woods, sometimes for shifting practice and other times because Malia doesn’t like being indoors all the time, gets restless and starts pacing. She’s not quite as fast as him, but she knows the land and how to use it better, moves through it like she belongs while he’s trying not to trip, thinking too much about where his feet are going. She moves with more confidence in her body than Scott thinks he’s ever going to feel himself.

“Okay,” he says, panting. “That’s probably far enough.”

She stands in front of him smirking faintly with her eyes skipping between the trees. It’s been at least a week since she disappeared on him mid-run and came back with a dead rabbit or bird dangling from her hand. “Only six miles,” she says. “Getting tired?”

“Getting winded,” he tells her, straightening up from leaning his hands on his knees, wipes the sweat off his face. “I’ll just have to try not to get chased for more than six miles.”

There’s a tree on a sloping mound of earth with a trunk that bends almost ninety degrees near the ground before it slopes back up again into a straight line. They use it like a bench, Scott sat leaning against the trunk where the tree shoots upwards, arm looped around it. Malia runs her fingers over the bark, follows the pits and grooves while her feet scuff through the leaves, pulling away little pieces and breaking them into smaller bits. She does that, touches things like she’s blind and trying to see them, getting used to skin and fingers instead of paws and fur, uses her body like she’s always saying _This is me, this is mine_ under her breath. It’s probably not the best recurring theme for so many of them to share.

“My dad’s been asking questions,” she says, rubbing her fingers under her nose. “About what I remember. Where I go. Who my friends are.”

“He’s probably just worried,” Scott says.

She shrugs. “He wants me to be someone else.” She says it like it’s plain truth with no meaning attached. “He wants his daughter.”

“You’re his daughter,” Scott tells her, but she shakes her head.

“I used to be, but I barely remember it now. Sometimes we have these moments where everything’s great, and then suddenly I feel like an imposter. He wants me to be _her_ – who I was before. He wants me to be the girl in the pictures on the mantle, the one who smiled so much, and I’m _trying_ but it’s not—”

“You’re doing great,” Scott says, turning so he’s facing her more. “Really, you are. You don’t have to push yourself so hard.”

Malia looks at him, smiling a little. “People keep telling me that. Stiles. Lydia. You.”

Scott nods. “Well it’s true.”

“I want to be—” She huffs. “I want both, I just don’t know if that’s possible. I was good at being a coyote, good at staying alive and not needing anything from anyone. I was never lonely. This is all so much harder, even the small things. I don’t want to choose and end up losing something. Instinct is easy. Choices are so—complicated.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah they are. But they can be the good kind of complicated. You can be more than one thing. Everyone’s more than one thing.”

Malia makes a face. “Yeah but most people aren’t like this.” She gestures down at herself. “Most people don’t feel like their head is too far off the ground and their skin’s too bare. They don’t forget not to eat things raw or worry if—if your eyes are glowing and that’s why everyone’s staring or if that’s just how people are supposed to look at you or—” She looks up into the branches, jaw tight. “Most people don’t have to try this hard to _be_ people.”

“So forget most people,” he says. “Don’t be most people. Be you. You is enough.”

She snorts but smiles at him anyway. “Maybe you should talk to my dad.”

“I will if you want me to,” he tells her.

“Thanks,” Malia says, a little stiff, like she still is with human manners type stuff some of the time. “But I don’t know how I’d explain… anything. What an alpha even is.”

“I can just be your friend,” he says. “I’m your friend before I’m your alpha, and I can be your friend without being your alpha at all if you want. I know it’s a lot, the pack thing. I’m—I’m still trying to figure it out.”

“No,” she says. “I like being in the pack. It’s good to have—it’s good. I’ll figure things out.” She nods to herself. “I’ll talk to my dad. Try and… get to know him from scratch, maybe. My mother would probably have liked that.”

He smiles, nods. “Okay. And if you need help—”

“I’ll ask you,” Malia says. “Or Stiles. Or Lydia. Or Kira. I’ll probably ask Stiles first.”

“That’s fine,” he says, still smiling. “We all wanna help you. Just, uh, maybe double check with one of us if Stiles gives you any advice that sounds…”

“Dangerous?” she asks, like she’s about to tell him she can handle it anyway.

“Illegal,” he says on an exhale.

“Oh. He told me you’d be worried about that,” she says, watching him with her head tilted.

Scott snorts. “Oh yeah? What’d he say?”

Malia frowns, thinking. “He told me to call you a nerd, and ask if you needed help removing the stick. What does—”

“Don’t worry about it,” he says, waving a hand and trying not to laugh. “Stiles is just… being Stiles.”

She nods like that makes total sense. Maybe it does. She’s probably the first person ever to understand Stiles before she understands all the people who aren’t Stiles.

“We should probably go back,” she says, looking up into the sky and sniffing. “It’s going to rain soon. The ground around here gets kind of slippery.” She makes a face. “I hate winter.”

He nods. “Good idea. I’m supposed to have dinner with my dad tonight anyway.”

She eyes him. “Stiles told me your dad’s a jackass.”

Scott snorts. “Is that the word he used?”

She smirks. “That was one of them.”

He shakes his head. “Stiles doesn’t really—”

“He’s protective of you,” she shrugs. “They all are. They love you. That’s how it works, right?”

“In the pack?”

“Having friends,” Malia says, gently, like she’s handling a soap bubble.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, it is.”

“So that means it’s good that Stiles hates your dad?” she asks.

“It means he cares about me,” Scott tells her. “And that’s how he shows it. It’s good as long as he doesn’t do anything to get himself in trouble. But the stuff with my dad is more complicated than that.”

“I don’t get it,” she says, watching him and frowning, absently picking away another chip of bark. “He hurt you. He hurt your mother, your pack – your family. Why would you ever forgive him?”

“Because…” Scott says, pausing while he feels it out, like pressing on a sprain. He can smell the rain coming now too. “Because sometimes that’s how you live with yourself.”

-|-

There’s a full moon on a Thursday, and Scott can’t make himself stay inside.

It’s not as bad as it used to be, but he still catches himself pacing or staring out the window, feeling the walls weighing on him no matter how he tries to listen to music or do homework or watch TV as a distraction.

Eventually he gives up, throws the book he’d been pretending to read onto the bed and moves down the stairs and outside faster than he’d meant to. He doesn’t want to worry his mom if she wakes up; she checks on him more often than she used to, stands in his doorway at night while he pretends to sleep. But she’s been working extra shifts – more extra shifts than usual – since the hospital is still so understaffed. He shuts the door quietly behind him.

Being outside helps. The air’s cold on his face and the moon shines through the clouds, everything bright and pale. It smells like it’ll rain soon, and he can hear little stirring noises up and down the street, people in their houses and animals in the yards. A small thrill climbs up his back: he’s free.

He takes off at a run, moving through streets in the shadows of houses and around the little orange puddles of streetlights. It’s good just to _move_ , jumping cars and fences because he can, because it fits his skin more comfortably across his shoulders. He’s not really sure where he’s going, until suddenly he is.

The preserve is full of trees that have lost their leaves, a slick carpet under his feet as he runs and staggers up and up. The air smells of animals and dirt and his pulse throbs quicker than he can make his feet move, outpacing him. It would be funny if funny didn’t feel so far away: hunting his own heart through the woods.

It makes him angry. Everything makes him angry, including his anger, because his anger is a failure like too many other things. He stumbles over roots and dips in the ground because he’s not bothering to look where he’s going. He’s not going anywhere; he just can’t bear to stop.

He slips and falls onto his hands, wet earth soaking through his jeans at the knees and sticking the hems to his ankles, smearing over his palms like the tongues of dead things. He lets out a frustrated, balled-up sound that doesn’t make him feel any better, and stands up with clods of dripping mud and leaves in his fists that he throws away, like he can rip the world into a shape that holds him up or shove it aside like he’s wading through a pool. The mud stings his hands where his claws have cut. He can smell his own blood trail, see the shiny blots of red-black on more leaves around his feet like spiders’ eyes looking up at him.

There’s no one else in the woods, no heartbeats besides the animals that hide or run away from him. He wants there to be someone, suddenly there in front of him, someone who’ll look at him and tell him all the things he’s thinking about himself. Someone who’ll try and challenge him. His anger makes him lose control, and losing control makes him angrier, circles fitting inside each other, smaller and smaller, tighter and tighter, making it harder to breathe.

Moonlight falls between the clouds and the skeletons of trees, finds him and pricks at his skin, drags his blood through him on barbed hooks. He’s overlooking the town now, standing on rock with rows of lights humming and blinking far away, a whole other planet with him floating outside of it.

He howls, like he’s been wanting to since the sun set and the moon took its place, the howl that’s been coming for days and weeks. He throws his head back and empties his lungs, empties every bit of air through his razor teeth and his burning throat. It turns human at the end, or something close, the roar dying back to a thin shout that makes him wince, like hearing a stranger being tortured in another room.

The sound echoes and comes back at him, then fades away out over the town. His town, not as far away as it looks or feels. He’s empty, drained and pressed thin. The air brushes against his face and maybe he can just lie down with the moon hovering over him like it cares, shut his eyes and wait until morning. Maybe things will make sense in daylight.

Light pours in from everywhere at once, yellow-bright and stabbing. It finds him and he puts a hand over his face, but the light slides between his fingers, wriggles under his eyelids. It slowly rolls away, off to the side, the woods looking brown and dull and bare wherever it lands. A rumbling he hadn’t noticed until it stops, stops. There’s a bang, metal on metal. Other sounds, pitter-patting and shuffling, and a smell like sweat, old photographs and—

“It’s kinda late to be out here, y’know,” Stiles says, standing half in the headlight beam from the jeep, hands hanging by his sides and his head cocked at an angle. His heart’s going too fast and his scent’s turning sour with worry.

Stiles takes a step forward, and Scott makes a sound without meaning to, twitches back. It’s not – _he’s_ not safe. Stiles shouldn’t—

Stiles takes another step forward. “Easy there, buddy,” he says, holding his hands out now. Scott can hear the blood slipping through the veins in his wrists, can smell it. “It’s just me, so let’s keep the snarling and the maiming to a minimum, what d’you say?”

It takes a few tries, but his fangs pull into his gums with an ache. Vaguely, he wonders what colour his eyes are.

“Stiles,” he says, voice gone hoarse. “What are you doing here?”

“Dude, werewolves in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones,” Stiles tells him, standing in arms reach like anything about that is a smart idea right now. “You followed me into the woods once upon a time, remember? Plus I couldn’t sleep, so I was just sorta driving around in circles, and then I hear you doing the wolfman call out here, and I figured hey, maybe something’s wrong.” He leans closer, squinting like he can see through Scott’s head to the thoughts printed on the back of his skull. “Pretty sure I was right about that. No offence, Scotty, but you look about five different kinds of crap right now, and I’m not talking about the sideburns and the grass stains.”

“I’m fine,” he says, because it’s a reflex for both of them now.

“Sure you are,” Stiles says. “That’s why you’re all alpha-d up and walking barefoot out here by yourself, right?”

Scott looks down at his toes digging into the ground, at the dirt and bits of leaves on his feet. “Huh.”

“Yeah,” Stiles snorts. “You’re just fine. It’s not like before is it? You’re not having performance issues, or whatever?”

“No,” Scott says, watching Stiles watch him. Stiles is wearing one of Scott’s jackets. It’s distracting, their scents getting mixed together. “I just… wanted to be outside. I’m okay, really.”

Stiles hums, noncommittal. “Well I guess I can’t blame you, what with—” he points up at the pockmarked face of the moon. “Hey, I don’t need to tie you up again do I? You’re not feeling any homicidal urges?”

“Might be feeling one right now,” Scott says, prodding Stiles in the shoulder. It’s hard not to touch. With the anger and frustration bled out of him he wants to shout and run again, wants to roll Stiles into the dirt and make him laugh, pin his wrists and breathe against his throat. He curls his toes harder into the leaf litter.

“Please, you’d be lost without me,” Stiles says. “I’m the wind beneath your wings.”

“Hot air, anyway,” Scott mutters, and Stiles flips him off.

“You coming back now?” Stiles asks, thumbing over his shoulder at the jeep. “All done communing with nature?”

Scott shakes his head. The idea of being indoors again, with walls leaning on him and a ceiling shoving down makes his chest go tight. “Not yet,” is all he says, trying to sound casual and not like his back is pressed to a corner.

“Alright,” Stiles sighs, scratching his neck. He walks to the jeep. Scott’s expecting to hear the engine, the tires catching on the damp ground, to watch Stiles leave because Scott doesn’t know how to make him stay without using the wrong words, handing him the wrong reasons. Instead Stiles comes back around from the trunk with a roll of blankets. “What?” he says, when he sees Scott’s face. “You think I don’t prepare for things like this?”

Scott watches him spread the blankets over the flat rock, sit crossed-legged and lean back on his hands.

“Go on, oh creature of the night,” Stiles says, tipping his chin up and chewing on his lip. “Go hunt wabbits or something.”

“You’re just gonna sit there and watch?”

Stiles shrugs one shoulder. “Somebody’s gotta make sure you don’t brain yourself on a tree. Come on, show me some moves.”

There’s something important happening here, one little motion at a time, small migrations toward a big change like continents shifting. Stiles is all intent focus and narrowed eyes, the jeep’s headlights making them shine like pennies through the lashes casting shadows on his face. He crosses his legs at the ankles and settles back a little more, bites his bottom lip and raises his eyebrows impatiently.

Scott thinks he’s being dared to do something, but he’s not sure what. He knows what he wants, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to get it. But if Stiles wants him to show off, then he can do that. His eyes glow red and his teeth sharpen, claws tapping on his thighs. He’s excited, suddenly, tip-top full of noise and heat, power that wants an outlet. He likes the way Stiles is looking at him.

He moves, even faster than he did coming up here, carving a wake into the leaves that scatter behind him. He stays steps ahead of what Stiles can track, can hear Stiles’ body shifting against the blankets, trying to follow his movements. He runs in a wide arc from where Stiles is sitting, out and out until he knows there’s nothing dangerous anywhere nearby, _needing_ to be sure. He moves through the trees, jumps between the trunks to haul himself up, drops back down and skids in front of Stiles winded and grinning with a mouth full of fangs, buzzing out of his skin with the power in his blood and the moonlight on the back of his neck like warm breath.

Stiles makes room for him and Scott flops down on his back, stares up at the sky and lets the laughter out in a giddy, adrenaline-shaky rush.

“Well?” he says, panting, rolling his head and looking up at Stiles.

Stiles makes a considering face. “Eh, I’d give it an eight, maybe an eight-point-five. Needs more cowbell.” He’s leaning into Scott now, hand against Scott’s side. Looking up Scott can see the pulse in Stiles’ neck, the upward curve to his mouth and the point of his nose. There’s calm in lying like this and watching Stiles breathe and blink, listening to his heartbeat and tracking the changes in his scent. There’s other things too, fear and things a lot bigger than fear.

“Should’ve brought whiskey,” he says, just for something to say, and Stiles huffs.

“Hate to break it to you, but there’s not enough whiskey in the land to get you buzzed anymore, dude.”

“I meant for you. Like we used to.”

“Nah,” Stiles says, waving a hand. His fingers brush Scott’s forearm when he puts it back down, and the tingle goes up to Scott’s shoulder. “At a certain point being the only one wasted at the party just starts feeling sad. And it was hard enough driving up here sober.”

“You didn’t have to do that,” Scott tells him, because telling Stiles he needs to sleep more, and eat more, and worry less, and please, please be okay isn’t getting them very far.

“I know,” Stiles says, simple as that, leaning against him a little more. He’s looking straight up, like he’s counting stars. “Sometimes I wonder what it feels like,” he says, eyes on the moon as it moves out from behind the clouds again. It’s not a subtle topic change, but there’s no plastic-sharp stink of worry or pain when Scott breathes him in.

“It’s nice,” Scott says, eyes following the line of Stiles’ neck to his jaw like an arrow, looking at all the places where shadows collect like rainwater. “Not always, but—” he breathes out, settles into the fall and rise of his body, the laced-up cage of his ribs feeling like somewhere he could live. He wants to close his eyes, but he doesn’t want to stop looking. “Sometimes I never want to feel anything else.”

He finds Stiles’ hand with his. Stiles glances down at him. Another shift, like gears changing. Stiles smells like himself and not like himself in some small, half-hidden places, all of it mingled with Scott’s jacket pulled close around him. He’s pack and home and a million things Scott could spend the rest of his life trying to count, a star overhead for every one.

Stiles curls his fingers around Scott’s, and Scott has time to think that there’ll be mud on Stiles’ skin with his fingerprints smudged into it right before Stiles bends down and kisses him.

It’s just as slow and careful as that first time in the bathroom, makes Scott’s breath catch and his heart skip, an empty space between the beats like a palm to fold around a secret. Stiles has a hand resting on Scott’s chest, bracing himself, and it’s so good feeling the weight of him, real and heavy and whole or something close, sliding up towards his chin, bunching and wrinkling his shirt. Scott hums into Stiles’ mouth, licks at the corner of his lips and feels him open up for it. Stiles’ breath spills ragged across his skin, and Scott slides a palm over the back of his head, thumb stroking through the hair that’s growing out again. He thinks Stiles’ll keep it this time, sure that his body’s all his own again.

When Stiles sits up Scott sees the flush that’s spread in blotches down his cheeks to his neck, drawn in by how good the hot skin smells. He’s hard, hips twitching off the blankets, and he wishes he was brave enough to ask if Stiles wants him to show off again – wants to pull himself out and jerk off shouting Stiles’ name and tasting him in his mouth, come in a rush knowing Stiles could see what a mess he’d make. He can smell how Stiles’ scent has gone thick, turned on and a little bitter-salty where he’s probably wet, clinging to his underwear, and he groans, grits his teeth against the urge to roll onto his belly and mouth at the outline of Stiles’ dick through his pants.

“What’re we doing here, Scott?” Stiles mutters, trembly and out of breath. His mouth is red and wet with Scott’s spit that he hasn’t wiped away.

“I don’t know,” Scott says, swallowing, reaching for the little bit of self-control he has left. Putting it all into words feels like trying to cup the sea in his bare hands, so he says, “Something good,” hoping there’s room in simple honesty for this much hope. Maybe some things don’t need explaining. You don’t need to understand gravity to not float off into space. Some things don’t require belief.

Stiles is staring down at him, chest moving in stuttered ups and downs. “Something good,” he repeats, feeling out the shape of it. Eventually he looks away again, but his eyes are creased at the corners and his mouth is sloping up, a lightness to how he smells and how his heart beats, like he’s thinking _maybe_.

Scott lies back and closes his eyes, enjoys the thrum of strength in his body, his chest rising to the sky like a cathedral. He smiles when Stiles’ fingers start playing with his hair.

Deciding they have time feels like tempting fate, but there’s a voice in his head that sounds like Allison telling him there’s no such thing.

_Maybe_ , he thinks, tilts his face to the moon, and lets himself drift.

-|-

Scott walks to Stiles’ house the morning of the funeral, tells his mom over and over not to worry about driving him, promises her he’s fine and tries to let the air clear his head. Stiles’ dad answers the door before Scott’s even raised his hand to knock. He’s wearing a black suit minus the tie, and the amount of sympathy on his face makes it hard to look at him.

“Stiles is upstairs,” he tells Scott as soon as he’s inside.

“Is he okay?”

Stiles’ dad smiles at him, faint and lopsided. “Shouldn’t I be asking if you’re okay?”

Scott looks off to the side, tries to swallow the lump that’s been refusing to unstick from his throat all morning. He’s been telling himself the only way he’s getting through this is if he doesn’t think about it too hard, about what it means and how final it is.

“I’m fine,” he says, not even close to convincing.

“Yeah,” Stiles’ dad sighs. “Yeah that’s about what I figured.” He rubs a hand over his face, the other one reaching halfway for Scott’s shoulder before it drops away. “Look, Scott, I uh—I can’t tell you it gets better. I wish I could, son, I really do, but it—well, it just doesn’t.” This time his hand makes it all the way to Scott’s shoulder. “It’ll hurt for a long time. You’ll wonder how the hell you’re supposed to leave the house or put one foot in front of the other. But you’ll do it, because that’s what people do. Because it’s the only choice that’s not giving up or running out on the people who are still here, the ones who need you.”

“And then what?” Scott whispers before the question is totally solid inside his head. “I get up, and I try not to—I try and keep going, but how do I—”

“A little at a time,” Stiles’ dad says, squeezing Scott’s shoulder. “And then eventually it just becomes something you learn to live with. But don’t feel like you’re on your own, alright? Because you’re not. And don’t think that feeling what you’re feeling now, and letting all this change you, makes you weak, ‘cause it doesn’t. ”

Scott nods, clenching his jaw and focusing on his breathing. “Okay,” he says, unreeling the air from his lungs slowly so it doesn’t fray and break. “Okay. Thanks.”

Stiles’ dad smiles at him, weak and sad. He squeezes Scott’s shoulder again and then lets go. “Stiles is upstairs,” he says again. “Malia was here a little while ago, but she didn’t stay long. I think he could use you with him right now.”

“Yeah,” Scott says. “Yeah, I’ll—I’ll go see if he needs some help.”

“You’re a good kid, Scott,” Stiles’ dad says when Scott’s at the foot of the stairs. “You’re all good kids.”

_I don’t think any of us are really kids anymore_ almost makes it out of his mouth, knocks against the backs of his teeth. Instead he nods and walks away.

He takes the stairs slowly, pulling himself back into line. He stops in the hall outside Stiles’ room and takes a few deep breaths with his eyes closed. Stiles’ house smells familiar, years and years of mingled scents layered over each other, and he wants it to be comforting, like Stiles’ heartbeat. He straightens up, takes another breath, and heads inside.

Stiles is sitting on his bed, hands in his lap and his head bowed between his shoulders. He’s wearing a white undershirt and boxers, black socks rolled down around his ankles. The rest of his suit is on the bed next to him. He almost looks like he’s praying, except Scott’s only ever seen Stiles pray once, at another funeral a long time ago.

“Hey,” he says softly, because he can’t think of anything better.

“Hey, Scott,” Stiles says, sitting up without actually looking up, watching the carpet between his feet like it’s about to open wide and show him something.

“You’re not ready,” Scott says, and then regrets it because it sounds like a meaningful statement instead of a comment about Stiles not being dressed yet.

Stiles rubs his hand over his face, around to the back of his neck. He’s not looking in Scott’s direction. It hits Scott that this is what Stiles looks like when he’s stalling for time to think of an excuse. Scott gets why it never fools their parents.

“Yeah, I don’t think I’m going,” Stiles says, still not looking at Scott. His face is pinched at the corners of his eyes and the edges of his mouth like he swallowed something bitter.

Scott blinks. “What? Stiles, it’s Allison’s—”

“I know, okay?” Stiles says, and he meets Scott’s eyes with his own bloodshot, bruised-looking ones. “I’m just not sure I can.” He breathes out, shaky, and jerks his head to the side, facing away from Scott. His throat bobs heavily when he swallows and the tendons in his neck look like cables under too much strain.

“Stiles, I kind of need you to do this,” Scott says, shoved up against the side of what might be panic or might be his temper getting ready to spill over, his skin suddenly taunt and about to rip. “We all have to be there. We need to—to say goodbye.” _It’s the last time we’ll all be together._

“Yeah,” Stiles scoffs, giving him an ugly look, hard and distant. “‘Closure’. Except it’s all bullshit. Nobody gets closure. Things just _happen_. People die and it’s—there’s no reason, there’s no making it all sound okay and meaningful. No grand cosmic lesson. It doesn’t—” He sniffs, grits his teeth. “They’re just _gone_ and it’s all so fucking stupid, god.”

“I know,” Scott says. “I know it is.” He sits in Stiles’ desk chair, hands gripping his thighs, stomach filled with lead. “It’s—I can’t make this better. Nobody can make this better. But it’s _Allison_. So we’re all going, and we’ll—we’ll tell her how much she meant to us, and we’ll try to live with it. That’s all we can do.”

Stiles is back to staring at the floor. “D’you remember my mom’s funeral?” he asks.

Scott frowns, tries to see where Stiles is going and can’t. “Uh. Sort of, yeah.”

“I don’t,” Stiles says. “Not really. It’s all blurry. I remember the drive to the cemetery, getting there and people patting me on the shoulder and telling me how sorry they were and how brave I was. I remember the casket going into the ground, tugging on my dad’s sleeve asking him why she wanted to be buried. It didn't seem right putting her down there all alone. I think I told him to stop them. I don’t remember what anybody said or what picture of her they used. I can't remember if my dad cried or if I just want him to have cried because that’s what’s supposed to happen at funerals.” He rubs his knuckles across his mouth. “Then it’s just… all that time I spent talking to a slab of stone. I used to worry she was lonely.”

“Stiles—”

“I don't remember what Allison's voice sounded like,” Stiles blurts, head snapping up. “I can picture her face if I try – how she looked holding her bow, or how she smiled at you or Lydia, or frowning at her notebook in class. We’ve all got pictures, right? But her voice is just... out of reach now, and whenever I think I do remember I’m sure it’s wrong. And now we’re gonna go put her in the ground, cover her over with dirt. I don’t want to remember that and forget what her laugh sounded like. How’s that fair?”

“I used to call her voicemail,” Scott admits, hands squeezed together in his lap, sour taste in his mouth. “I was afraid I couldn’t remember either, so I’d—I didn't let myself call it more than once a day at first, like I was rationing it, but." He shakes his head. “By the time her phone got disconnected I was hearing her voicemail greeting in my sleep. The words didn’t even sound real anymore. We don’t choose the stuff we forget. Doesn’t mean I don’t remember her, or miss her.” His voice breaks there, and he winces, takes a second just to rope himself back together. “And if you don't go today, that’s what you'll remember instead.”

Stiles raises his eyebrows at him. “So basically you’re telling me to suck it up?”

“I'm saying she wouldn’t want you to stay away,” Scott replies. “I’m saying we all need to stick together.” He offers a weak smile that’s really a crack in the thin concrete he’s made of. “I’m saying I don’t know if I can do this without you there helping me. Please?”

Stiles pushes his thumb and forefinger into the corners of his eyes. Scott watches his shoulders move, the slide of his feet on the carpet. In just his underclothes Stiles still looks thin, insubstantial, even if it’s not as bad as a few weeks ago. The suit laid out next to him makes Scott think of animals that shed their skins or leave their shells behind.

“Okay,” Stiles murmurs, and then stronger, “Okay. I can— _we_ can do this. Alright.” He sits up straight and stares at the ceiling for a second, flings out his breath. His hands splay flat on the sheets next to him, toes curling against the floor. He aims a _so we’re doing this, huh?_ kind of look at Scott. “Sorry for crapping out on you.”

“Don’t be,” Scott tells him. “You’re not the only one who’s feeling…shaky.”

“Yeah,” Stiles sighs. He flattens out a corner of the comforter that was already flat to start with, rubs a hand around to the back of his neck. “My dad tell you Malia was here?”

“Yeah. He said she didn’t stick around long, though.”

Stiles nods, makes a face. “I don't think she’s really ready for funerals yet, y’know? God, just the fact that our little friendship circle requires a funeral preparedness lecture.” He shrugs. “I guess coyotes don’t bury their dead. So I was stood there spouting all this crap about burial rites and grieving and she was looking at me like we’re all a bunch of sickos with morbid hobbies. Honestly I don’t think she'd realised until then that her mom and sister had funerals while she was…” He trails off, pushes his hand through his hair.

“We’ll all go to my house afterwards. She can be there for that instead if she wants to, it’s fine,” Scott says, and Stiles nods.

“Guess I’d better put this on,” Stiles sighs, plucking at the leg of his pants. He tugs them on, and then his shirt, fingers quickly moving over the buttons. “You gonna help me with this?” he asks, holding out the tie. Scott knows for a fact that Stiles can tie a tie just fine, but he gets out of the chair anyway, takes it from him.

“So really,” Stiles says while Scott pulls his collar up and loops the tie over his head, tries to get it right when he’s facing the opposite way to normal, “you’re okay, right? I mean, I know you’re not _okay_ , because why would you be, but you’re not—”

“I’m fine,” Scott mutters, staring determined at the tie as he slips the last part through the loop and tightens it. His fingers brush Stiles’ skin while he tucks Stiles’ collar back down and smoothes it out, and he feels better than he has since he woke up after all of two hours sleep last night.

“Yeah,” Stiles sighs. “You’re fine. You know I see right through you though, yeah?”

“Oh yeah?” Scott asks, actually looking _at_ Stiles now.

“I do,” Stiles nods. “Always have. I’m just saying, I own this suit, so feel free to blubber all over it if you need to.”

“Thanks,” Scott says, dry. He runs his hands over the tops of Stiles’ shoulders, pulls his jacket straight. Then Stiles grabs him, wraps his arms around Scott’s middle, and Scott gives up on the distractions and the pretending and the white-knuckle clench of everything. He turns his face into Stiles’ neck, shoulders heaving. He’s not even really crying – there’s no sound, no tears. He’s past that. It’s just the heavy, hollow-chested weight shifting, the world being forced into a different shape beneath it with no way to undo it, any of it. He clings to Stiles until he remembers to worry about leaving bruises, nose pressed under Stiles’ jaw while Stiles rubs his back.

“I got you,” Stiles is saying into his hair, whispering it over and over until it stops being words and just becomes sound, the background to Scott’s blood and his breath and the pounding in his head.

He feels hot all over when they peel apart, too aware of the suit over him and his skin over his bones and the ache under the bones that’s probably never going away, screams at him that something’s missing, or that he’s forgotten something and he’ll regret it later.

“You ready?” Stiles asks, and the way he asks says he knows it’s a stupid question, but they’re on train tracks and it doesn’t matter what they do because there’s only one place to go, the path already right there before they even thought about moving.

“Yeah,” Scott says, rubs both hands roughly over his face. “Yeah, let’s go.”

-|-

Stiles was right about the funeral getting blurry.

Little things still reach him, like how the silence in the car is its own person, or the number of people standing around the grave, or the haunted expression on Isaac’s face as he stands next to Chris, whose face looks more lined, like weathered stone. Mostly it’s surreal, not like a dream, more like trying to imagine someone else’s dream as they describe it to you. They gather around the grave, Kira on Scott’s right and Stiles on his left, Lydia standing next to Stiles and Stiles’ dad behind him with Scott’s mom. Scott can’t help but smell the wolfsbane on some of the people he doesn’t recognise – other Argents, hunters. Those people stand subtly straighter than the rest, and he wonders how much death it takes before you get used to it, before it stops weighing you down and becomes just a consequence you get over. He can’t decide if he wants that or if it scares him. He could be imagining all of it.

People speak and he doesn’t hear them. It starts to rain and he doesn’t feel it. Kira grabs his hand and he realises he’s shaking, manages to smile at her even though it feels unnatural to twist his mouth like that. Lydia’s holding tightly onto Stiles’ hand, and Stiles’ shoulder is pressing hard into Scott’s. They’re like dominoes, all in black, gathered around the one that got knocked down. He grounds himself with their heartbeats, and tries to ignore his own.

When he opens his mouth to say something his throat sticks. Once the words actually come it’s like he’s watching himself but not really doing any of it. It’s someone else talking about Allison – about how courageous she tried so hard to be, what a good friend she always was, how much he loved her. Someone else with tears in their eyes and a tremor in their words. He doesn’t know how long he talks for, but when he stops Stiles puts his free hand on Scott’s shoulder.

None of it feels even close to enough. How do you sum up a whole person? She deserves more. Then it’s Lydia’s turn, and somehow that hurts even worse; he’s gotten used to living with his own pain, and hearing Lydia’s slices the wound open all over again. By the time she’s done she’s crying silently, stood straight with tears rolling off her chin and her fingers white where they’re gripping Stiles’.

There are flowers on the casket lid, crisscrossing at the stems where people have put them down one after another. Scott adds one, sets it down gently, then reaches into his pocket. The pen taps against the wood as he puts it next to the flowers. He rests his fingers on it until he’s sure it won’t roll away.

“In case you forget again,” he says, his voice strangled down to a whisper, plummeting on broken wings. It takes so much effort to move his feet, heave his body in a different direction, even with everyone right next to him, touching him, propping him up. The ground’s flat, but it still feels like he’s climbing vertically with bare hands.

They don’t watch the casket going into the ground or the earth being shifted over it like a sheet, except for Isaac standing there, blank-faced while the soft sound of dirt falling onto wood drifts up, probably already hiding the fleur-de-lis engraved into the lid. They talk to some of the other people, but mostly to each other, the same look on all their faces like they’ve been robbed of everything behind their eyes. They hug and stay close like they’re afraid of being picked off one by one. Scott tries not to snarl at the couple of reporters gathered behind the barrier.

“Kept wondering if Derek was gonna show up,” Stiles says, eyes moving across the scattered crowd.

“I texted him,” Scott says. “He didn’t answer.”

“Maybe he didn’t want to be around all these hunters,” Kira says.

“Can’t blame him,” Stiles mutters. “Pretty sure at least a few of these guys are carrying guns under their suits. Three guesses what’s in the bullets. Everybody keep their fangs and claws to themselves, okay?”

“No Gerard at least,” Scott says.

“Don’t worry; I made it clear he wasn’t welcome.”

Scott turns, only realises he’d lost track of Chris when he’s looking right at him. “You did?”

Chris nods. Closer up his beard looks rougher, has more gray in it than Scott ever remembers. “If anyone asks, his health problems kept him away.”

“And if we’re asking…” Stiles says, raising an eyebrow.

“I told him if he tried to make an appearance that there’d be consequences, and he wouldn’t like what I came up with,” Chris says, a look passing between him and Stiles that Scott doesn’t like, something like anger or a challenge, both of their scents crossing into something acrid. Eventually Chris breaks the stare and looks at Scott. “Could I have a word?”

“Uh, yeah,” Scott says, nods to the others. “I’ll catch up.”

“We’ll go find my dad and your mom,” Stiles says. “If you need—”

“It’s okay,” he nods, and Stiles glances at Chris one last time before the three of them walk away.

“I just wanted to let you know,” Chris starts, “that—”

“You’re leaving,” Scott finishes. “I heard.” When Chris quirks an eyebrow he adds, “Isaac.”

“Of course,” Chris says. “I suppose he’s still part of your pack, after all.”

“He’s my friend,” Scott says.

Chris sighs, rubs a hand over his face that scrapes his beard with a hiss. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m not trying to be difficult.”

“But it’s a difficult day,” Scott says, and Chris nods.

“There are things I need to take care of,” Chris tells him. “Some changes I’m going to try and make with the other hunting families, and what—whatever’s left of my own. Something to make all this,” he nods at the cemetery around them, “result in some small amount of good, for what it’s worth.”

“A new Code?” Scott asks, thinking of the inscription on Allison’s headstone. _Allison’s headstone_ echoes off into the deep places in his head. Chris shrugs.

“It won’t be easy. There will be families who won’t accept it, especially from someone whose entire line is technically defunct now, with no female members left to lead it. But I have to do something. Something to make her—” His jaw clenches. “To make her proud. To make them remember that she was—that she was so much better than those of us who got lost along the way. Who’ve let the blood soak in too deep.”

“She loved you,” he says, even though he’s sure Chris knows. “More than she ever blamed you for…anything.”

“I know,” Chris says. “And she loved you too. I just wish I’d been more—” He lets a sharp breath out through his nose, frowning to himself.

“I understand,” Scott tells him. He really does. When did that happen?

Chris nods. “There’s one more thing,” he says. He reaches into his jacket, takes a strip of paper from the inside pocket and hands it to Scott. He doesn’t know what it is until he’s already holding it, which is probably the only thing that stops his hand from shaking.

He’s looking down at Allison and himself, the printout of photo booth pictures from that double date with Stiles and Lydia, back in a different life when they were different people. It’s wrinkled where it’s been folded, creased at one corner. His own eyes glow back at him. Allison smiles, kisses his cheek. He’d forgotten about the pictures. It was only a few months ago, how could he have—

“I found it with her things, while I was packing them away.” Chris says, and Scott’s head jerks back up. “She—I thought you should have them.” He smiles, watered-down. “She’d want you to have them.”

Scott swallows and it clogs his airway painfully. His eyes drop back to the pictures. Allison’s arm around him and her hand on his face. He knows it’s him, but it’s like looking at someone else, feels like he skipped a chapter and now it’s just familiar names and places but none of it means anything, all the context missing.

“Thanks,” he says, not looking at Chris this time. He puts the photos in his pocket. His hand doesn’t shake.

Chris puts his hand on his arm. “Take care, Scott.”

“Yeah,” Scott says, blinking up at him. “You too.” He watches Chris walk away, sees him pulling his shoulders back and stop to shake hands. In the space of a blink he’s a different person, all his vulnerabilities packed away.

Isaac’s standing a few feet away when Scott actually starts noticing the world around him again. He’s got his hands in his pockets and he’s looking at Scott with an awkward squint.

“So I guess it’s my turn,” Isaac says as Scott walks over to him. “Last stop on the farewell tour.”

“You could always stay,” Scott says lightly. “We haven’t rented out your room or anything.”

Isaac smiles, but it’s forced. “Thanks,” he says, “but—it’s not like I _want_ to leave, you know? I just…can’t stay.” He makes a face at himself. “This town is…” He looks around, expression drawn in tight lines.

“Yeah,” Scott says. “So, France?”

Isaac shrugs. “Don’t know if it’ll last. Me and a bunch of European hunters.”

“American werewolf in Paris,” Scott says, and Isaac makes a face. For how much they’re both stepping around actually talking about Allison, Scott can almost feel her standing next to them. In his head she looks at them and smiles, rolls her eyes.

“I just want something different,” Isaac mutters. “Be somewhere else for a while. Maybe just me.”

Scott nods. “So long as you’re okay.”

Isaac huffs. “I’m not okay. I can’t remember what okay’s supposed to be like.” He eyes Scott. “You’re not okay either. So at least we’re on the same page.” The silence stretches and stacks up between them before he looks around and says, “It’s funny. I used to dig these graves. Think I liked it better when they were just holes in the ground. Way too much company in here now.”

Scott puts his hands in his pockets, but his fingers brush the strip of photographs and he takes them back out again, lets them hang by his sides. “I wish there was something…” He sighs, shakes his head.

“Me too,” Isaac says. His shoulders pull up a little steeper, mouth flattening like he’s about to bare his teeth. “I’d never been in love before,” he says, putting the words down gingerly, like something barbed and poisonous.

“Me neither,” Scott tells him.

Isaac’s mouth quirks. “Sucks, doesn’t it?” Scott’s laugh takes him by surprise, a quick double punch below his ribs.

“Yeah,” he says. “Worth it though.” Isaac just hums, sighs.

“I should probably get going,” he says. “Packing to do.” He makes a suggestion of a movement, arms twitching. “So, uh. What do we say here? Good luck? See you around?”

“Take care of yourself,” Scott tells him, and Isaac nods, glances off to the side, and then reaches out and squeezes Scott’s arm.

“You too,” he says, and then he’s walking away. Scott watches him get into a car and tries not to wonder if he’ll ever see him again.

The others are waiting for him, gathered in a loose almost-circle with his mom and Stiles’ dad. Lydia has her arm around Kira and her head on Kira’s shoulder. Stiles is talking to his dad. When he gets to them his mom steps forward and wraps him up in a hug. He closes his eyes for a few seconds and hides his face in her shoulder, his breathing serrated and catching in his throat. When she lets him go she gives him a sad smile and kisses his forehead.

“I’m so proud of you,” she tells him, damp-eyed with her hands resting on his shoulders. He can’t do more than nod.

“Everything okay?” Stiles asks when they all start walking.

“Yeah,” he says. “I think so. Maybe. And thanks, by the way.”

“For what?”

“Being here,” Scott says, glancing at him. They’ve drifted to the back of the group now, their parents up in front.

Stiles makes the face he makes when he does something small and important and feels awkward getting attention for it, when his distractions get taken away. He bumps their shoulders. “Yeah, well, whatever you need, alright? And thanks for not letting me duck out. I, uh, probably – definitely – would have regretted doing that.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he says, managing a small smile. Stiles mirrors it and puts his hand on Scott’s back between his shoulders, keeps it there until they reach the car.

He looks out the back window as they drive away. He can’t tell if he feels heavier or lighter, better or worse or the same. The day will end and tomorrow will get here no matter what he does, whether he starts counting from today or not, like one of those factory signs. _0 days without an accident. 0 days without a burial, a goodbye, an apology that doesn’t fix anything_. They’ll come back, he knows, to put flowers on her grave and maybe to talk to her. He thinks he’d like to come and talk to her. They’ll get used to her being gone and then have to live with being used to it. The edges of the wound will knit together, and they’ll figure out how to be whole.

He faces forward, because what else can he do?

-|-

After they’ve all gone home long enough to change and clean up they sit together in Scott’s living room, gathered in a bunch of mismatched chairs while they try to find their feet. Malia shows up with Kira, and they pile onto the couch with Lydia in her own chair next to it. Scott takes the armchair and Stiles drags the small chair that only he ever really sits on away from the wall and alongside Scott’s.

“Anyone hungry?” his mom asks, hand on the back of his chair. She looks like she doesn’t wanna leave them alone. “You should all probably try and eat something.”

“We could order in,” Scott suggests. He smiles when Kira catches his eye and mouths ‘pizza’ at him.

“Maybe Chinese,” Lydia says. “Or Indian.”

“Oh, Chinese is good,” Malia pipes up. “And so much better when you’re not scavenging it out of someone’s trash.”

Stiles blinks and says, “Okay, seriously? Name one food that’s _worse_ when you aren’t eating it out of a garbage can.”

“I’ll…get the menus,” Scott says, mostly to himself as the conversation gets away from them, pausing in the doorway just to watch everyone talking to each other, Stiles’ hands flying and Malia’s tilted head, Lydia rolling her eyes and Kira shifting to face Malia more while she talks.

His mom’s in the kitchen pouring herself coffee. She nudges him with her shoulder when he gets the menus out of the drawer, smiles at him until he can’t help smiling back.

“I think there’s some money on the side table in the other room,” she says.

Scott shakes his head. “I’ve got it, it’s fine.”

She looks at him for a second, and he wonders if she knows that he’s seen the bills, the estimates to fix the roof crumpled in the bottom of the trash, that he’s heard the messages on the machine cancelling some of her extra shifts. But she just shrugs and drinks her coffee, and the inflated raincloud feeling of waiting for it all to come crashing down moves off for now.

“You’re doing great,” she says, while he sorts through the stack of menus, taking out the doubles and the ones for places he doesn’t even think are open anymore. “You know that, right?”

He glances up at her, confused. “I’m not really doing anything.”

She shakes her head. “Sweetheart, you need to have more faith in yourself. I see how you are with your friends – your pack.” He smiles at her using that word like she’s had years of practice, even though it makes him sad too, for the loss of not knowing that kept her happier even if it didn’t make her safe. “They look up to you so much, and it’s because you’ve earned it, not because of some title. You love them, and they know it. You make them feel safe enough to be brave, and you don’t let them give up on themselves. They’re in there right now, and they can still laugh. That’s what matters, not the mistakes.” She rubs his arm. “Not anything else. Please don’t forget that.”

He sighs and it turns choppy at the end. “I just—sometimes I think someone else would do a better job.”

She puts a hand on his chin, and turns his face so he’s looking her in the eye. “I don’t,” she says, firm and final.

He frowns. “Why are you so sure?”

His mom smiles, strokes his cheek with her thumb. “Because you’re my son.”

He’s blinking away an itch in the corner of his eyes when Stiles calls out, “Hey, Scott, c’mon dude, before we resort to cannibalism and turn on each other.”

“Yeah,” he says, “just a second.” He smiles at his mom, hugs her, murmurs _thanks_ against her hair.

“Go be with your friends,” she says, hands rubbing his back.

Again he pauses between the kitchen and the living room, this time to rub a hand over his face. He dumps the stack of menus on the table between them, and drops back into his chair.

“What, did you have to dig them out of the crawlspace or something?” Stiles asks, that little undercurrent to it and the flicker behind his eyes that says he wants to ask a more serious question but doesn’t think he’ll get an answer, as if there’s any place he could tread where Scott wouldn’t want him. Scott just smiles, and after a few seconds Stiles smiles back, huffs and calls him a nerd.

“Dork,” Scott replies, still smiling, watching Kira and Malia leaning their heads together as they stare down at a menu, Lydia picking through the ones on the table.

They order, and Scott’s coming back from the bathroom when he runs into Lydia heading quickly the other way, her head ducked and her face twisted like she’s trying not to cry.

“Lydia,” he says, gently, and she jumps like she hadn’t noticed him. “You okay?”

“Fine,” she says, turns like she’s going to walk away, then she sighs sharply and mutters, “No. No I’m definitely not okay.”

He nods. “D’you want to talk about it? Anything, I mean. You don’t have to.” He shuts himself up with a wince.

“Trying to get used to the empty space,” Lydia tells him. “I keep turning to talk to her, and she’s not there, but I forget why for just a split-second. Then it all comes rushing back. Did that happen to you?”

“Yeah,” Scott says. “It stops eventually. Sometimes I still see things on TV or whatever and think how I have to tell her about it later, but.” He sighs. “It happens less often, at least. I don’t reach for my phone to text her anymore.”

She frowns down at herself. “I tried to hear her. I went back to the internment camp, and I know that’s—well. But I had to try. So I went back and I stood there and the whispers were there, but…” She shakes her head. “None of them were her. I would have—I would have heard her if she was there.” She makes a noise in her throat. “I don’t know enough about any of this – how it works, how I’m supposed to focus. I should’ve asked Meredith when I had the chance. I thought it’d be like hearing a voice in a crowd or something, but it’s not. It’s like sifting sand looking for a grain of salt.”

“It’s not your fault,” Scott says softly, and her attention snaps back to him. “You’ve already learned how to do so much. Maybe you can’t hear her because there’s just nothing to hear. Maybe—maybe she’s—”

“In a better place?” Lydia says, arching an eyebrow. “Like Heaven? You really believe that?”

“I don’t know,” he says, looking off down the hall. He feels awkward, kind of embarrassed. “If there’s a place like that, then—then that’s where she’d go.”

He looks back at her when she takes his hand. If she does let out a sob then it’s muffled against his chest when he hugs her.

“I’ll be fine,” she says when she pulls away, tucks a strand of hair out of her face with a finger. “I’m always fine.”

“I know,” he says. “But you don’t have to force yourself to be right now.”

When she carries on down the hall and the bathroom door shuts behind her, Scott leans against the wall, shuts his eyes, and finds every heartbeat in the house, every voice. He works from the outside in, accounting for everyone, until it’s just him. He follows the pulse under his skin to the animal with its paw on the top of his spine, pushing but not escaping, eager but not overwhelming. He’s alright. He is.

Stiles is up and answering the door when Scott walks back towards the living room. He recognises the scent just as Stiles opens it a crack, pauses, and then opens it the rest of the way.

“Well,” Stiles says slowly, looking Derek over. “You’re not the usual delivery guy. Picking up some extra work?”

“Funny,” Derek says, and then to Scott as he holds up a few plastic bags, “I ran into the guy outside.”

“Is he bleeding?” Stiles asks.

Derek ignores him, adds, “I paid him,” to Scott.

“Stiles, let him in,” Scott says, the tone sounding more like _Please be nice_.

Stiles rolls his eyes. “Fine, but I’m not tipping him,” he says as he steps to the side.

Derek hands Scott the bags, and then holds up a hand when Scott digs in his pocket for the money.

“Forget it,” he says.

“But—”

“Really,” Derek says. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Yeah Scott,” Stiles says, giving him a _What the hell_ kind of look that’s usually reserved for when he’s talking them out of trouble and Scott’s not playing along. “He said don’t worry about it.”

“Stiles, could you get the plates and stuff from the kitchen? Please?” he asks, and Stiles gives him a flat stare and an unimpressed head tilt before he sighs and walks off.

“Thanks for that,” Scott tells Derek. “You really didn’t have to.”

Derek shrugs, arms crossed over his chest. “It’s not a big deal. And I wanted to come by to say sorry for not being there earlier.”

“Don’t be,” Scott says. “It wasn’t—I didn’t tell you about it as like a mandatory thing or whatever. I just thought…” He waves his free hand between them, runs it though his hair. “I don’t know. In case you wanted to say goodbye or anything.”

“I’ve never been that good at goodbyes,” Derek says. “Especially at funerals.” He huffs. “And I’m not sure the little truce between me and Argent – Chris – extends to the rest of the family.”

“He doesn’t really have much of a family now,” Scott says, and then regrets it. “Anyway, you gonna stay and help us get through all this?” He holds up the bags. “I think we ordered enough for ten people.”

Derek does a good job at mostly hiding the little flicker of surprise, but it still shows in his eyes and the uptick of his eyebrows. It’s always Derek’s face that gives him away, more than his heart does. Sometimes Scott tries to imagine being raised with people who can hear and smell what you really mean and don’t even have to look that close to know it. Would that be claustrophobic or freeing? Maybe it’s just a different angle to the same thing, once you let people in; you can’t give someone a map and then expect a place to hide, can you?

“I don’t want to intrude,” Derek says, posture shifting and his scent moving through things Scott doesn’t really understand.

“You’re not intruding,” Scott says. It clangs against the air a lot heavier and clumsier than he meant it to. “You—you’re never intruding, okay? I know we’re not… whatever. But—ugh, will you please just come and sit with your friends and eat something? I promise nobody’s gonna mind.”

Derek’s feet scuff against the floor. He uncrosses his arms, nods with a faint smile that flickers like an afterimage. For a second Scott almost misses what it was like before, when they were always saying the wrong things and doing the wrong things, pissing each other off and never understanding, talking on different frequencies every time. At least then he didn’t look at Derek and feel like he’s just waving his arms in the dark waiting to hit something solid, like if he could just find the words... The judgements were more peaceful, more stable, than all the questions and uncertainty, even when they were wrong.

“I’m sorry,” Derek says. “For your—for Allison. I didn’t really know her, but…”

“You knew her,” Scott tells him, glancing away and then back. He sighs, “Come on. Food’s getting cold.”

Whatever awkwardness there is when Scott grabs Derek a chair and Derek helps him hand out cartons and plates, it fades once they’re all busy eating. Scott watches Stiles push food around his plate more than he eats, catches his eyes and ignores the put-upon groan Stiles lets out as he shovels a forkful of orange chicken into his mouth and chews, staring Scott down.

“Happy?” he asks, mouth still full. It’s gross, but Scott’s not letting him win like that.

“Ecstatic,” Scott says, pats Stiles on the back when he inevitably inhales his food. “Overjoyed. Thrilled. Uh…”

“Euphoric,” Derek mutters.

“Hey,” Stiles says, strained around a cough, eyes watering while he points his fork at Derek. “Don’t go helping him.”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Derek tells him. The half a prawn Stiles throws at him ends up in Scott’s lap.

“Oops. Sorry dude, friendly fire,” Stiles says.

When Lydia suggests it, they all pick up their drinks and murmur Allison’s name, the same cracked and shiny-eyed look passing through them like a ripple. Then Kira adds, “To staying together,” like a pledge, and it’s a different ripple this time, or a wave, stronger and brighter. They all repeat it, and Kira’s smile gets a little more sure-footed when Scott mouths a thank you at her.

“I don’t get it. This feels pointless,” Malia says, confused and frowning into her drink, frustrated with herself first as always.

“It’s a symbolic gesture,” Stiles tells her.

“So it’s pointless,” Malia says, nodding like they just agreed on something.

Kira snorts and starts laughing. Lydia looks like she at least wants to. Scott’s suddenly so overfull with how glad he is to have them that his throat feels thick and his eyes are filling up all over again.

“No," Stiles says, waving a hand. “No, it’s—okay yeah maybe it is pointless. But it’s still important.” He grins at her. “Hey, there you go. Humanity in a nutshell.”

The wave keeps them going, something buoyant holding them up. Between them they more or less manage to teach Malia how to use chopsticks, even if she just goes back to a fork in the name of efficiency, and once none of them can eat any more they slouch back in their chairs or against each other. Scott gets a little hazy with the endless feedback of everyone’s slow breathing and syrup-thick heartbeats, but it’s nice to feel something close to contentment coming off of them. It makes him think he’s doing something right, like he’s taking care of them even if it’s not much and definitely not enough after what they’ve just done.

His mom walks through the room, tying her hair back and frowning her can’t-find-my-keys frown. He plucks them out of the bowl on the table and hands them to her, ignores Stiles batting at him for pressing against his side too hard while he’s ‘mid-digestion here, Scott, seriously’. She points at the stack of plates. “Please wash those, instead of leaving them to grow so many kinds of mold that they form their own nation state.”

“I will,” he nods. “And there’ll be leftovers in the fridge for when you get home.” She smiles at him before she leans down to kiss him on the cheek. If she’s surprised Derek’s there, sitting with them, she doesn’t let it show, smiles at him just like she does at everyone else, taking them in before focusing on Scott again.

“You’re sure you’re okay with me going into work? I could switch shifts with someone who owes me a favour. Which is… almost everyone over there.”

“I’m sure,” he says. “You already switched so you could come with us to the funeral. We’ll be fine.”

“Alright,” she sighs, like she’s not sure she believes him. “I’ll be—”

“Late, I know,” he says, smiling when she rolls her eyes. “We’re okay, really. Don’t worry.” He says that as if he can stop her.

He dozes a little, not really sleeping, eyes always moving from Kira where she’s resting against Malia’s side to Lydia with her head lolling back against her chair; Derek with his leg crossed over his knee, hands lax on the armrests and a peaceful sort of expression anyone who doesn’t know him would probably believe; Stiles with his eyes shut and his fingers tapping lazily on his thighs. When he finally decides he needs water and drags himself up to move the plates into the kitchen, Derek takes half of them from him and follows him like he’d been waiting the whole time.

They split the task of cleaning up without bothering to talk. Scott washes and hands things to Derek to dry, pointing or nodding at cabinets when Derek holds up plates or glasses as a question. There’s a kind of relief in not having to say anything, in the slack rope of no expectations. They’re just moving around each other and sharing space. The day’s scraped him out and left him without many words to use, and he’s painfully grateful to Derek for being someone who understands that.

Everything clean and put away, leftovers in the fridge and even the countertops wiped down, Scott drops his head forward between his shoulders, fingers on the damp surface either side of the sink. He’s just tired, that’s all, tired and bruised in places not on his skin.

“You need to shift your focus,” Derek says, his voice like careful feet on a barely-frozen pond. “Don’t chase after the empty space. You’ll get trapped in it, and it’ll bleed you dry, pull you down like chains you make for yourself. Don’t give it power over you.”

“How,” Scott breathes out, not looking at him. He can feel it, the gnawing place that isn’t physical, doesn’t exist in a place in his body like a broken bone or an aching hunger. It’s just the rough drag of something gone, untouchable as shadow, cold and deep. “How do I—”

“Find your pack,” Derek says. From the way he sounds he’s standing closer, but Scott’s clenched his eyes shut so tight he can see green and blue splotches and nothing else. “They’re there. They’re always there.” He breathes out. “Use their heartbeats or their scents, imagine their faces. Stay with them. You’re theirs as much as they’re yours. You’re part of each other, and they’ll keep you safe.”

It’s still nothing physical, but he can feel it anyway, the coaxing buzz around his spine like an adrenaline rush, everything speeding up all at once, the wild pull just under the surface that he knows not to trust completely, that he’s never going to trust completely. But when he opens his eyes and sees his claws tapping on the counter it’s nearly no effort at all to pull them back, to get his fangs to slip up into his gums again. He lets his eyes burn red, channelling everything he can into the glow, imagines it as a rescue flare on a night with no moon, even guiding himself. _Be your own anchor_ , he thinks, his mom’s voice in the back of his head. Just maybe not his only one.

“That’s it,” Derek says when Scott stands up straight. “You’ve got it.”

“Thanks,” he says, clearing his throat and blinking a few times, eyes dimming back to human. The feeling’s still there, like it probably always was, wide and calm as a lake he can dip his fingers into or a well to drink from, but alive and changing every second like music. Now he knows he’ll be able to find it again, nothing else feels so overwhelming. The other thing is there too. Or not there. It’s the silence after the explosion and the pause after the gunshot, the fear that comes after the thought. The last gasp as someone dies. He can tell how easy it would be to sink into it, pour himself out like water onto sand and just disappear, let the cruel want and anger take charge.

“It doesn't go away, does it?” he asks, rubbing his palm in circles over his sternum, pressing down like he can smother what’s under it, get rid of the temptation.

“No,” Derek says, softly, standing next to him like a scaffold or a shield. “It doesn’t, not ever. And that’s a good thing. It means you still have a soul.”

It’s dark out when the others start to leave. Scott wants to keep them there, with him and together where they’ll always be stronger, safer. But he knows that’s not fair. They’re his and he’s theirs but they all belong to themselves. Balance is tricky. He hugs Kira and then Lydia, smiles when Malia bumps his shoulder on her way out. He answers Derek’s nod and watches them all go until he can’t see them or smell them, tilts his face to the breeze and gulps down the air until he’s sure there’s nothing there that shouldn’t be.

“I can stay over,” Stiles says next to him. “Already cleared it with my dad.”

“Do you want to stay?” Scott asks, looking at him. They’re close enough that he’s looking upward.

Stiles raises an eyebrow. "D’you want me to stay?”

Scott snorts, and Stiles smirks at him. “God. Okay, yeah, stay over. I want you to.”

Stiles nods, rocks back on his heels. Scott reaches out and snags his hand, just holding onto it, fingers curling into Stiles’ palm. “We did it,” he says, nodding out past the doorway at the night. “The day’s over.”

“Yeah,” Stiles sighs, holds onto Scott’s hand just as tight, uses his free hand to scratch at his neck. “God, it’s all been just one day.”

Scott hums. “Another one tomorrow. And the day after. And lots more after that.”

“You hope,” Stiles says, the hand not holding Scott’s resting on the small of Scott’s back now. The heat of him sinks into Scott’s side and soaks up between his shoulders, made more obvious with the cold outside air and the tips of his fingers turning cool against Scott’s. He brings their hands up to his mouth and breathes out over Stiles’ skin, lips brushing Stiles’ knuckles. He catches the skip of Stiles’ heartbeat, watches his pupils bloom outward.

“Hope,” he murmurs, warm breath stirring the hairs on the back of Stiles’ hand, “is all we really need.”

-|-

They’re down to just two more weeks before winter break, and it feels like they’re all killing time waiting for it, even though Scott doesn’t know what they’re actually going to do when school is out. It’s not like they won’t all be working to catch up through the holidays anyway, except maybe for Lydia.

“Yeah,” Stiles says when Scott mentions it to him in last period English, their desks shuffled closer together. He’s doodling in the margins of his notebook while Stiles twirls his pen. “Can’t say I’m feeling the Christmas buzz either. Maybe we’ll get some kind of demonic snowmen invasion, liven things up a little.”

“We’d probably need actual snow first,” Scott points out. “Not much chance of that in this part of California.”

Stiles shrugs. “Evil snow. Unnatural, unseasonable snow. Like, tiny bloodthirsty flakes of death. It could happen. Million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten in this town.”

“I was sort of hoping for more of a relaxing vacation,” Scott says, and Stiles looks at him like he’s suggested something totally freakish. Like murderous snowflakes, maybe.

“Well, Lydia’s going out of town with her mom and that whole side of the family,” Stiles starts, counting off on his fingers. “Kira is basically being held hostage by her parents for togetherness time that I’m pretty sure is partly about her mom not telling her that she’s a thousand-year-old fox spirit. And I dunno what Malia and her dad are gonna do. First holiday since she disappeared and all that. She says there’s a box of decorations in the attic that she sees when she goes up there to kill mice sometimes.” He squints at Scott. “Why are you suddenly Mr. Yuletide anyway?”

They get a pointed cough and a stare from the teacher. Stiles rolls his eyes, waits until it’s clear and then shifts their desks even closer. His foot taps on Scott’s and they’re pressed together from shoulder to elbow. Nobody around them even seems to notice, but Scott feels like there are eyes pressing at his back anyway. He tries to look away from Stiles’ profile and at the board, then decides it’s too much effort.

“I’m not being ‘Mr. Yuletide’,” he mutters, making verbal air quotes. “I was just thinking about how we’re gonna fill up all that free time.”

Stiles looks at him, tilts his head. They’re close enough Scott can see the subtle details in his irises without trying. That feeling of eyes on him gets worse, and he doesn’t know when his knee started bouncing.

“You’re not, like, freaking out about being away from people, are you?” Stiles asks. “‘Cause I know it feels like forever since the last vacation, and I know we’ve all missed our share of classes, but still.”

“No,” he says, then, “Maybe. But only a little. People should be with their families if they want.” The more he lets it out into the open the more unreasonable it feels, being possessive like that, worrying about not seeing everyone all the time. But how’s he supposed to make sure they’re safe if he can’t be there with them? So much could happen before he could do anything. His heart’s started climbing up towards his throat, so he slows his breathing until it settles.

Stiles is smirking at him now, on his way to a full smile. “Aw, Scotty. You’ve gotta learn to share, dude. Give a little, take a little, let your poor heart blah blah blah.” He knocks his shoulder into Scott’s. “Besides I’m not going anywhere. It’ll just be me and dad and too much takeout, like last year and the year before. The ban on me using the oven during the holiday season is still in full effect.” His eyes follow a path across Scott’s face that looks random but maybe isn’t before stopping at his mouth and arriving back at his eyes again. “You should come over. Bring your mom. We can defy the traditional meal and the Norman Rockwell theme as a group, rebel with MSG and a complete lack of paper hats. Buy each other annoying presents that we’ll wanna burn by New Year’s.”

“Yeah, okay,” Scott says, smiling back, stopping Stiles’ pen just before it rolls off the side of their now-unified desk. “Sounds good.”

“Course it does,” Stiles nods. “Holidays. Bonding. Uh. Sleepovers.” There’s a pink tinge spreading from low down on his cheeks to under his collar. He’s looking at Scott’s mouth again. When it clicks what Stiles means, Scott’s stomach flies between the ceiling and the basement in the space of a blink.

“Seriously?” he asks, sounding like he’s just taken a hit to the ribs. Stiles’ scent is changing now too, warmer and darker.

Stiles bites his lip, looks down at his notes. The places they’re touching are suddenly the only places Scott has any feeling in. He bangs his foot against the leg of his desk, his knee against the underside, and his pen clatters to the floor.

“Well not if you’re gonna have a freaking heart attack about it,” Stiles mutters under his breath once Scott’s retrieved his pen and the teacher’s stopped glaring at them again.

He slides his foot up against Stiles’ under the desk, waits to smile until he knows Stiles will see it.

“Sounds good,” he says again, amazed he’s managed to stay in his seat with all the energy suddenly bouncing around inside him like a pinball game. He wants to hold Stiles’ hand, on the desk or under it hidden between them. He wants to kiss Stiles right there and not care about the eyes he could just be imagining. He’s got no idea where the line is now, if there is a line or if they’ve scuffed it out.

Stiles’ foot taps against his, one-two one-two-three. He leans back in a stretch, and when he sits forward again his hand skims down Scott’s forearm on its way to change the page of his textbook. He winks when Scott looks up.

They’ll figure it out.

-|-

It’s a rush, knowing that they both want this, that they’re even more in sync with each other than before. It makes him feel braver, or maybe just a little reckless, all the simple things like his hand on Stiles’ shoulder or how Stiles looks at him have an edge of _There’ll be more after this._ He didn’t realise how much he needed something to make him eager for what could happen, instead of worrying and being afraid of what _might_ happen.

Both of them are still uncertain, the fragile newness of what they’re doing making them both hesitate awkwardly from time to time, in places where they wouldn’t have weeks or months ago. There are still the days when Stiles won’t look at him for very long, the moments where Scott reaches out and Stiles steps away. It hurts, but it hurt before, and the moments don’t last as long now, happen less often and get shaken off quicker. When Stiles says he’s fine it doesn’t sound so much like a lie.

They start kissing more on the good days, as a first step, when they see each other at school in the morning or when they separate, making out on the couch, adding it to how they share space until it feels natural. That’s enough all by itself to keep Scott flying high for hours. He figures out how to kiss Stiles softly and with enough intent to make him blush or smile, use his tongue to get Stiles to swallow heavy and loud and lose his train of thought, to make him smell turned on and _happy_ , smiling with his mouth red and shining, bouncing on his feet.

Stiles treats it like they’re competing, as if there’s a boundary stretched like a line of tape he wants to cross. He puts his hands on Scott’s neck or slips them under his shirt, noses against his jaw or nips with his teeth in a way that makes Scott have to focus on his eyes not glowing. He pulls Scott in close or presses him against his locker, and licks into his mouth until Scott’s hard and doesn’t care where they are, who’s around to see. He touches Scott like he’s storing it all up somewhere, or like Scott’s made of hidden doors and latches, secret places Stiles wants to carve his initials into.

They tangle together on the couch in Scott’s living room after school, hours before his mom gets home where it’s just the two of them. Stiles is lying in the V of Scott’s legs with his feet propped on the arm, reclining back with his head on Scott’s chest. There’s an old episode of The Simpsons playing on the TV and they keep quoting bits of it from memory, voices overlapping. Stiles picks up one of Scott’s hands from where they’re laced together on his stomach, Scott’s arms wrapped around him while he pretends he’s not nosing through Stiles’ hair and taking big breaths.

He doesn’t notice at first, too wrapped up in trying to separate all the things that weave together into Stiles’ scent, chasing after what shifts just under the surface like watching water through a sheet of ice. Stiles is playing with his fingers, turning his hand and stroking his wrist, thumbing along his palm. Eventually he realises that Stiles is _counting_.

“Hey. This is real,” he says softly, coaxing. He kisses the top of Stiles’ head and looks down at Stiles’ hand where it’s holding his own. He takes his free hand off of Stiles’ stomach and adds it to the tangle of fingers they’ve already got going. Stiles is still now, but his heart rate’s picking up, like he’s been cornered even though he’s not trying to sit up. “It’s okay. Keep going,” he mutters, turns his head to kiss the side of Stiles’ neck where he knows Stiles is ticklish, and Stiles’ breathing restarts in a startled laugh.

Scott spans his hand out, the grip of his other one sliding down Stiles’ wrist and stroking over his forearm, watching the gooseflesh form and the dark hairs stand on end. Stiles takes Scott’s offered hand in both of his, long fingers tapping at the spaces between Scott’s.

“One,” Stiles says, in a tone like he’s just indulging Scott. Two. Scott kisses behind his ear. Three. Scott’s thumb plays over the soft skin on the inside of Stiles’ elbow. Stiles hands are a little colder than his, colder than they used to get, and the contrast sends tingles down his back while Stiles ticks off his fingers one at a time.

Four. Scott runs his nose through Stiles’ hair again. His toes are curling into the couch cushion while he makes himself hold still instead of rolling them over so Stiles is underneath him and he can kiss Stiles’ mouth open, trace lips along his jaw.

“Five,” Stiles says, low. He’s turned on now, pushing back when Scott’s hips twitch, rubbing against him through their clothes.

“See?” he murmurs against Stiles’ crown. “Real, right?”

“Yeah,” Stiles says, tipping his head back against Scott’s chest, watching Scott upside-down. Looking down the length of him, Scott can see his dick pushing against his pants, his hands clenching and opening. Scott ducks down more so that when Stiles cranes back his mouth rubs over Scott’s cheek, hot and wet against the stubble he didn’t bother shaving off today. Stiles huffs against his skin. “My dreams are never this good anyway.”

“Mine are,” Scott says. Stiles is squeezing his hand now, their fingers laced together. Scott’s hips come up off the couch and Stiles groans. They’re sliding more and more against each other, aligning neater at the hips. Stiles’ head is almost at Scott’s shoulder now, face turned against Scott’s neck while he pants open-mouthed.

“Fuck,” he slurs against the hinge of Scott’s jaw. His hands are grabbing at the couch, at Scott’s arms, using whatever he can to anchor himself while he pushes back with his hips. “Scott. Scott, c’mon, please.”

He doesn’t know what Stiles is asking for, not in terms of how far or how much. He’s not sure Stiles knows either. They’re both exploring this place without a map, connecting the dots in a zigzag and not knowing what the final picture is supposed to be.

So he says, “I dream about touching you,” and Stiles’ fingers wrap tight around his wrists, pin his arms against Stiles’ chest so he’s caging Stiles in from both sides, feeling Stiles’ stomach clench and his chest shudder. He tilts his head to let Stiles bite at his jaw, teeth sharp-scraping on the lobe of his ear. He swallows and his Adam’s apple bobs against Stiles’ lips. “I dream about—about how you’d taste. What you’d sound like.” Blood throbs in his ears. “About fucking you, marking you. About your fingers in me. God, Stiles.”

Stiles’ breath is more like a hiss against the pulse in Scott’s neck, fluttering like the heart of a tiny animal. “D’you jerk off when you wake up?” Stiles asks, muffled, and Scott can feel his smirk on his skin. “Hump your mattress? D’you get off and come all over yourself thinking about me, Scott?”

He nods, blinking and not seeing anything. “Yeah. Yeah, I do. Shut my eyes and imagine it’s you.” He bucks up, dick rubbing against Stiles’ ass, friction from his clothes almost burning, and Stiles groans, thumps his head back into Scott’s collarbone. He can’t think for a second when Stiles lets go of his arms, the only thing registering that less contact is bad, that he wants more. He focuses enough to look, and Stiles is pulling the button on his pants free, yanking on the zipper so hard it snags the fabric, metal teeth grinding.

“Yeah,” he says, breathless, watching Stiles shove his pants and underwear halfway down his thighs, his dick slapping up against his stomach, getting precome on his shirt. He’s thick and veined, pink at the head like his mouth, balls already drawn up. The smell of him hits Scott like a train, his mouth flooding with spit. He pushes up against Stiles’ ass again, just his own clothes between them now.

“Scott,” Stiles whines, hands clawing at Scott’s arms, his legs, anything he can reach. “What—what do you—”

“Like this,” he says, puts his hand on Stiles’, fingers between fingers moving down to Stiles’ pretty dick. Stiles makes a gut-punched noise when both their hands wrap around him, twist and stroke, more precome beading at his slit and running down the length. “Just like this.”

Stiles is all shivers and splintered moans, choppy breathing. Scott’s free hand rucks Stiles’ shirt up, palm skimming wide on his belly, holding him still, feeling him shake. “I’m stronger than you,” he says, when Stiles tries to buck into his fist, smearing wet on Scott’s fingers when they catch on the head. “I know you like it.”

“Fuck,” Stiles whispers, sharp and harsh, dick jerking, blood so close to the skin Scott can smell it. “Yeah, you could—yeah, Scott, c’mon.” He’s trying to rut through the tunnel of their hands, but there’s not enough leverage with Scott holding onto him and the way Stiles is lying on him. He’s winding tighter, his shoulders and his back tensing against Scott’s chest, heels thumping against the couch and head tipped back.

They’re both sweating, the shine of it on Stiles’ temples and the itch as it rolls down to the small of Scott’s back when he arches. Their breathing is deafening, heartbeats overlapping and outracing each other, falling in and out of time. Scott’s hand grips Stiles’ tighter, works them faster on his dick, thumb pressing at the slit, and Stiles makes a cut off whimper, an animal sound that goes right to the parts of Scott’s mouth where his fangs want to drop, tingles in his fingers with the promise of claws. Stiles would probably watch, captivated while Scott jerked him off with a clawed hand, made him come with the threat hovering so close. Stiles is always treading near the edge, balancing on the blade and then leaping away just before he falls. That could be something else Scott could give him.

“M’close,” Stiles groans, like Scott can’t tell by how taut he is from neck to hips, the trembling in all the places they’re touching, the blush staining down from his cheeks under his shoved-up shirt. By how wet he is, soaking their fingers and making filthy slick sounds when Scott twists their hands from the base of Stiles’ dick to the tip and back down again.

“It’s okay,” he says, has to fight back the rumble, the rock-against-rock voice at the back of his throat like a thread that winds all the way through him, connected to the urge to pin Stiles down and put teeth to his neck, lap away the sting with the flat of his tongue. His hand goes from Stiles’ chest to his neck, cups his jaw awkwardly before he traces fingers over Stiles’ mouth, lets Stiles latch onto them and suck. “It’s okay. You can come. I want you to come. I want to see it. I’ve got you. It’s okay.”

Stiles clenches up, curling forward, teeth gripping Scott’s fingers and his moan running through the bones of his hand. Then like a string snapping he falls back against Scott’s chest, mouth open wide and his eyes shut tight. Scott’s fingers smear spit on Stiles’ cheek while Stiles spills over their hands, spatters his belly and his chest, aftershocks making him whimper. Scott runs his free hand down and down, uses it to tug on Stiles’ balls, fingers pressing behind, and a few weak pulses streak Stiles’ hip, abs twitching through the last of it.

Fumbling between them, Scott gets his pants open, works his dick through the gap in his shorts. Stiles is limp against him, sucking in air. It’s easy to spread his legs a little more with a foot hooked around his ankle, and then Scott’s thrusting up with his dick between Stiles’ thighs, against the cleft of his ass, already close enough he can feel the pressure rolling along his spine, heat like fire climbing a match. It’s hot and damp with sweat and precome, the head rubbing against Stiles’ balls, the inside of his thigh. Stiles will smell like him, dirty and willing and eager.

Scott’s fingers grip Stiles’ thighs, push his legs together, make him tighter as he fucks up in quick snaps of his hips. Stiles is trying to push down into him, Scott’s dick smearing sticky wet marks all over. When his orgasm hits him he’s got his lips mashed against Stiles’ crown, nose full of his scent. He stripes Stiles’ thighs and his taint, slicks the way for the last few uneven shoves, breath leaving his chest one fistful at a time, come running down his dick and sticking his shorts to his skin.

They lie dazed in the wreck of each other like a caved-in roof, Scott’s hands touching Stiles wherever he can, rubbing the mess into his skin, Stiles twisting his neck to suck marks between Scott’s neck and his shoulder. He’ll learn how to control the healing, he thinks, so when Stiles leaves bruises they don’t fade away. They’re gonna be stuck together if they don’t move soon, all the drying sweat and come starting to itch. It’s still a while before they stagger off the couch, walking like they’re drunk to the stairs, Scott laughing at the face Stiles makes as he scratches at the stuck-down hair on his belly.

He climbs into the shower behind Stiles, kisses his shoulders, the pattern of moles leading down his back and up again to his neck. They make out with the water getting between their lips, Stiles’ hands on his hips and his ass. Both of them get hard again, hips slotting together under the spray, but it’s different now, not about getting off. Eventually he’ll know all the places on Stiles’ body he didn’t know before, what makes him arch and flush and want, build an atlas inside his head, memorise paths for his fingers to follow. He pushes the wet hair off Stiles’ forehead, hands resting on Stiles’ neck while they kiss, watches the water cling to Stiles’ lashes and the glimmer of his smile like something delicate.

He gives Stiles clothes to wear, does a generally crappy job of hiding how much he likes seeing Stiles in them, the way Stiles smells of him again. Stiles falls back onto the bed, hands crossed behind his head. Scott listens to Stiles’ heart, the even pace of it like footsteps through a wide room, controls his breathing until they match up, so close nobody outside could tell them apart.

-|-

Scott has a new dream that night. He’s sitting in class, at his desk with all the other desks turned to face him, pair after pair of eyes shimmering at him like coins at the bottom of a well. Someone holds out their hand, and with his claws he pulls away a piece of his side. Someone else’s hand in his face and he rips out a chunk of his thigh. His arm. His back. The side of his neck. The hands keep coming.

“Told you group therapy sucks,” Stiles says from the next desk over. He’s got Scott’s heart cupped in his hands like a baby bird, and it’s getting blood all over him. “Better hurry it up, Scott,” he says. “They’re getting antsy. Hope you brought enough for everyone.”

More hands. More flesh. The pain’s a constant, burning throb that fills him, stops him shifting so he’s stuck with just blunt human fingers, useless human nails that leave his skin and muscle ragged. His tendons hang snapped and he thinks how there’s no way to nock arrows onto them like that.

He screams but it’s drowned out by the people banging on the door, waiting to be let in. Scott knows he has to hurry or they’ll start fighting in line, and someone might get hurt. He has to hurry or they’ll pull someone else apart instead. He screams but he doesn’t have a tongue. The hands push at him too fast and he can't keep up. The blood makes his fingers slip across his body. He’s giving out bones now, breaking them like pencils to make more pieces, cutting himself on jagged ends.

“Scott,” Stiles is saying urgently, the heart in his palm still thumping. “Scott.”

“I know,” he tries to say, because he’s making too many mistakes and soon he’s going to be down to just his hands and nobody will want them, not with all this blood. Who’d take a monster’s hands?

He’s dizzy, soaked in sweat that stings, and the apologies don't sound right. The moon hangs full outside the window, peering in, and if they'd just wait he’d be able to heal and there'd be more, there’d be enough.

“Scott,” Stiles says again, yelling now, shaking him. “Come on! Come _on_ , Scott!”

“I’m trying!” he shouts and the dream cracks and he falls through the floor, wakes up still shouting. He’s in the chair in his room, a book open in his lap, and he’s digging his hands into his forearms. Stiles has him by the shoulders, shaking him hard enough his teeth are knocking. The smell of panic hits Scott like a wall.

“I’m okay,” he says, moving his tongue against the roof of his mouth to remind himself it’s there. The back of his throat tastes sour.

Stiles is breathing hard, and his heart is a fist banging on a door. It takes him a second to register Scott’s open eyes, but he stops shaking him, fingers hard on Scott’s shoulders. “Like hell you’re okay,” he snaps. “You scared the crap out of me, screaming and scratching yourself. I thought I was gonna have to—I don’t even know. God, Scott, what the fuck was that?”

“Nightmare,” he says, unclenching his hands, lays them out flat. He’s left little crescent marks on his arms, pale and already fading, but there’s no blood. He rubs his face, his neck, down his sides, just to be sure. “Just a nightmare.”

Stiles steps back enough for him to get out of the chair. His shirt’s stuck to his back with sweat, and he grimaces as he tugs at it, only manages to get it stuck lopsided at the shoulder.

“That… that was not a nightmare,” Stiles says, running a hand over his jaw and breathing out sharply. “Your teeth falling out is a nightmare. Thinking you didn’t study for a test is a nightmare. I woke up and you were—it sounded like someone was—”

“I’m alright,” Scott tells him, and then Stiles is hugging him, wide-splayed hands on his back and sharp chin digging at his shoulder.

“Gave me a fucking heart attack,” Stiles huffs, and Scott gets it together enough to hug him back, turns his face into Stiles’ neck and breathes slowly.

“Sorry,” he murmurs and Stiles snorts in his ear, tells him to shut up.

“Ugh, you’re all gross,” Stiles says, plucking his damp shirt away from his back but still not letting go. Scott leans his forehead against Stiles’ shoulder, lets him take his weight. The more of the nightmare he tries to remember the fuzzier it gets.

He goes into the bathroom and splashes water on his face, the back of his neck, throws his shirt in the hamper. He stares at his reflection in the mirror like he’s waiting for it to look away first, then breaks the tie by shutting off the light.

Stiles is standing outside the bathroom door, doesn’t even pretend he wasn’t hovering, which gives Scott a pang of guilt over how much he really must’ve scared him. He orbits around Scott as if there’s a bubble he can’t get past, not like when he holds himself back sometimes because he’s still afraid of hurting Scott, because he’s still unsure in moments where Scott doesn’t know how to tell him that he’s sure enough for them both. Scott steps against him and kisses him, quick and gentle on the corner of his mouth, and either he disproves the bubble or it’s burst now because Stiles’ hand is on his hip and his mouth is soft when he kisses back, coaxes Scott into it with a flick of his tongue and the hum from the back of his throat, until Scott’s skin feels hot and tight in a totally different way to when he woke up.

“You’re not sleeping in the chair anymore,” Stiles tells him, thumbs brushing over his sides and making him shiver.

“Okay,” he says, lets himself be tugged down onto the bed. Stiles pulls Scott’s arm over his waist and tucks his back against Scott’s chest. Scott presses his nose into Stiles’ hairline, kisses the bump at the top of his spine, slots his knees into the hollows behind Stiles’. He shuts his eyes and doesn’t dream.

-|-

When his mom finally has a day off on a Sunday, she sleeps in and then Scott cooks dinner for just the two of them.

“Maybe I should work long shifts more often,” she says, watching Scott put plates on the table. It’s nothing complicated, chicken and vegetables, baked potato and salad, but she’s looking at him like he’s fixed all her problems.

He sits down, adds salad to his plate. “If you work any more extra shifts you’ll end up living in the hospital.”

She hums around her fork, chewing before she says, “It’s been starting to feel that way lately. I swear time doesn’t work right in that building.”

“You work too hard,” he tells her, making sure it comes out with at least some gratitude in it. He knows she’s running herself into the ground to make sure they can still turn the lights on. Sometimes he thinks about asking his dad for help, but it leaves a bad taste in his mouth. Maybe just for some of the repairs the house needs…

His mom looks at him, raising her eyebrows. “I’d say that runs in the family.”

“Deaton doesn’t need me that much,” he says. “I’m only there two or three nights a week lately.”

She huffs. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

He busies himself with cutting up his chicken, staring down at his plate. He looks up when she puts her hand on his arm.

“We don’t get the chance to talk much anymore,” she says. “I miss when we used to do that.”

“Me too,” he nods. “But I’m okay, I promise.”

She smiles, maybe a little sad. “I just worry about how much pressure you put on yourself. And I forget how grown-up you are. Sometimes I wish you didn’t have to be – that you could just be a kid for a while.”

They go back to eating, and the conversation moves on to other things. His mom tells him funny stories about the people they get in the emergency room, like she used to when they were home together more and he’d ask her about her day every time she came home. She talks about the other nurses, how they’re all still trying to make up for how many staff the hospital lost.

“At least the doctors seem to finally realise how much we do,” she says, rolling her eyes. “And all it took was a spree killing.”

She asks him about the others, and he tells her how Malia is doing, about Lydia seeming more like herself lately, that Kira looks more comfortable around them and with being included. His voice stumbles briefly when he talks about Stiles, trying to stop himself rambling.

“Sometimes it’s like none of it ever happened,” he says, fingers curling against the table, putting his fork down so he has to stop pushing the last few string beans around his plate. “But—I don’t know.”

“I’m sure he’ll get there,” his mom tells him. “An experience like that… Well, not _exactly_ like that, but I mean trauma in general. There’s no straight line from there to ‘better’. And just because he has bad days doesn’t mean he isn’t improving in the long-term. He has you and all your other friends, and his father looking out for him. It’ll just take time. Time and patience.”

“Yeah,” Scott sighs, rubs at his forehead. “I know. I just—”

“You worry,” she finishes for him, and he smiles when she does. The look she’s giving him shifts a little into something teasing. “That’s what people do when they love someone, in…whatever number of ways.” He blinks and she laughs at him, holds up a hand. “I won’t ask, because honestly there are things I just do not need to know, and it’s not like I have to give you a lecture about safe sex.”

He puts both hands over his face, looks at her through his fingers.  “Oh god. Please no. I still have nightmares about those pamphlets on STIs you brought home.”

“They weren’t that bad.”

“You read them _aloud_ , mom.”

She snorts. “Just as long as you’re both being… sensible. Honest with each other. I know I’ve talked to you about communication before too.”

“We are,” he says. “I promise. Totally honest. Now can we please not talk about this any more?”

“Sure,” she says, obviously trying to suppress a laugh. “You’ve suffered enough. But I am going to have to talk to Stiles’ dad about this.”

“ _Mom_.”

“Oh relax, I’m kidding,” she says, shaking her head. “Really honey, lighten up. But just so you know, neither of you can hide things worth a damn, especially around each other, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he knows already.” She notices the dubious look he’s giving her, rolls her eyes. “Okay, werewolves and other assorted supernatural things being the exception. And I knew _something_ was going on, but even my deductive powers have limits.”

They sit on the couch to watch a movie and eat ice cream, a blanket thrown over both their shoulders. They used to have movie nights every week, a tradition they started after his dad left, when they were still getting used to the feeling of it being just them. Looking back, he wonders if his mom was feeling guilty even though she did the right thing. He’s not sure when they started letting it slide, but now he can’t remember the last time they did this.

“Y’know,” his mom starts, spoon scraping along the side of the tub as Scott holds it out to her. “We spent so much time talking about how you’re doing we sort of skipped over how you’re feeling.”

He looks back at the TV, fingers winding in the blanket, breathing slowly while he thinks how to answer. He knows she’ll wait for him. On the screen, George Clooney tells the pastor he needs to get his brother and their money into Mexico.

“I feel like I’m falling off a cliff,” he says. It’s as close as he can get to describing it, the inevitable plunge and how impossible it is to see what he’s heading for, the lurching fear and the earth pulling him down.

His mom leans against him, warm and familiar, comforting as always. “So you’ll learn to fly. Or you’ll find someone to catch you.”

-|-

Stiles has never been on Scott’s bike before. Between it being the last few days of the semester and the fact that Scott woke Stiles up with a pretty impressively filthy blowjob, he gets him to agree to riding to school instead of taking the jeep. At least he did before they actually got outside.

“Seriously, this can’t be safe,” Stiles says, watching Scott walk the bike down the driveway. “Just look at it.”

Scott stops and looks at him. “Hey.”

Stiles rolls his eyes. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to insult your glorious machine. Your glorious, inevitable fiery death machine.”

“You won’t die,” Scott says patiently, swinging his leg over the seat. “You think my mom would let me ride it if it wasn’t safe?”

“I think you’re a werewolf with supernatural healing powers,” Stiles replies, standing on the sidewalk with his arms crossed. “And I’m a squishy, breakable human with insides that won’t go _back_ inside once they’re splattered all over the freaking road.”

“I promise your insides aren’t going anywhere.” He grabs the spare helmet and holds it out until Stiles sighs and takes it. “I’ll go slow, okay? I’ll be super careful.”

“I bet you say that to all the guys,” Stiles mutters, and Scott laughs.

“Just you,” he says, watching Stiles mess around with the chin strap. “Look, if you really don’t want to—”

“Oh no,” Stiles says, wagging a finger at him. “I don’t even have my jeep here now. You think I’m taking the bus _and_ putting up with your sad puppy face all day? Forget it. I’d rather take my chances on this thing.” He nudges the bike’s front wheel with his foot.

“Awesome,” Scott says, grinning and putting on his own helmet. Stiles raps his knuckles on it as he walks around to climb on behind him, the noise reverberating in Scott’s head. He settles onto the seat and puts his arms around Scott’s middle.

“Y’know if you wanted to cuddle there’s way less high-speed methods,” Stiles says, almost into Scott’s ear. “Ways that include walls or more than two wheels, maybe? Or, hey, even a bed. Classics are classics for a reason, Scott.”

Scott starts the engine, and Stiles’ arms tighten around him. He pulls his gloves on, zips his jacket up, and sets them off slowly down the street.

“If I die you can expect to be haunted forever,” Stiles says, talking loud enough to carry over the rush of the air.

“You’re not gonna die. And I’m cool with you haunting me anyway,” Scott yells over his shoulder, and grins when Stiles’ hand slaps him on the chest.

He goes slower than he would on his own, slower than when he’s had Kira riding with him. More than wanting Stiles to get used to it, he’s letting himself enjoy the feeling of Stiles pressed against his back maybe tighter than really necessary, chin digging into Scott’s shoulder and arms crossed over his waist. Once he thinks Stiles has a feel for it he speeds up, and laughs when Stiles whoops in his ear, shouting nonsense against the wind.

They’re a little late getting to school, the bell already rung and everyone inside, a few stragglers walking up the steps while Scott pulls up and kills the engine.

“Okay,” Stiles says, out of breath, a mile-wide grin on his face that makes Scott want to get his phone out and take a picture. “That actually didn’t totally suck.”

“High praise,” Scott says, taking his helmet off. He smiles at Stiles’ flushed face, his bright eyes. “Told you you’d be fine.”

Stiles scoffs. “Yeah, well, you got lucky this time, buddy.” His smile is still there while he fumbles for the clasp on the helmet strap and tugs it off.

Scott tries not to laugh, he really does, but Stiles’ hair is stuck up in little tufts in some parts and flattened to his head in others, and now he’s biting the inside of his cheek trying to hold in the laughter that’s making Stiles scowl at him and rub at his head with one hand.

“You’re just—” Another laugh bursts out of him. “You’re just making it worse, dude. You—here.” He reaches out and tries to make the mess at least look deliberate, smoothing down the sides and trying to unflatten the back, running his fingers over Stiles’ scalp to separate out the cowlicks and tucking strands behind his ear; it’s getting long again. After half a minute or so he notices how close they’re standing, his gloved fingers with Stiles’ hair slipping between them. Stiles is staring down at him and biting his lip, cheeks turning darker pink than they already were.

“Uh,” he says, hand stilling, dropping onto Stiles’ shoulder. “I think you’re good?”

“Yeah,” Stiles says in a creak like an old door. His eyes dart to the hand on his shoulder. “Y’know if you wanted to, like, leave those gloves by the bed sometime…”

Scott swallows, skin turning hot and his fingers tingling. He looks at his hand, brushes it up to the join between Stiles’ shoulder and his neck, touching bare skin showing above his collar. He watches Stiles lick his lips. “Really?”

His head’s suddenly crammed full of everything that idea could turn into: wearing the gloves while he jerks Stiles off, watching the leather turn shiny with precome; slicking his fingers and stretching Stiles open, his hole tight and pink around the black; wearing them and pushing his fingers into Stiles’ mouth, watching his cheeks hollow and his eyes go lidded, lips rubbed red and wet. Or Stiles doing any of that to him. All of it. There’s nothing he can think of that he doesn’t want.

“Uh, Scott,” Stiles says, throat clicking as he swallows, looking at Scott’s mouth. “We’re in the school parking lot.”

“Not sure I care,” Scott murmurs, leaning up to kiss Stiles, hard and wet, parting his lips and sucking on his tongue, biting his bottom lip. Stiles grabs at him as soon as they make contact, hands clenching in the shoulders of his jacket. Scott keeps his eyes open to look at Stiles’ lashes on his cheeks, the dark splotchy blush on his face, doesn’t care that he’s out of focus.

“Alright,” Stiles says, hands on Scott’s sides between his jacket and his shirt. “Y’know they have security cameras pointed at the parking lot, right? Somebody’s probably watching us on a monitor in an office somewhere right now?”

“Are you embarrassed?” Scott asks, half joke and half serious question, bracing himself for when they pull apart, for the air that’s not loaded down with how Stiles smells.

Stiles moves so they’re pressed together, slides his hands into Scott’s back pockets and squeezes. He kisses Scott again. “Nah,” he says, wet and swollen lips brushing against Scott’s cheek. “Just thought we could maybe ask ‘em for a copy of the footage.”

Scott snort-laughs, and Stiles grins, leading them inside and down the hall to their lockers. They’re so late. Neither of them are close to caring. Stiles shivers a little as he digs a textbook out of his locker, and Scott hands him his jacket, something taking off in his chest when Stiles pulls it on, tugs the sleeves down over the pebble-round bones in his wrists.

They walk into class and drop into their seats, Stiles winking at him when their eyes meet. Lydia leans forward from her seat behind Scott and whispers, “Subtle,” with so much sarcasm one word shouldn’t be able to hold it all. Stiles smothers his laugh into his palm.

-|-

The end of the semester comes and goes, and Scott tries to pretend it feels like a change. He spends some extra afternoons working at the animal clinic, more time helping Malia with her shift, has lunch with Kira. Stiles stays over or he stays at Stiles’. They spend even less nights apart than they already were, making out even if they don’t always end up going further than that. It’s overwhelming just getting to lay pressed together on Stiles’ bed, Stiles on top of him or under him, grinding their hips until it gets urgent enough that they tug out of their clothes. He’d take anything, accept whatever Stiles wants to give him, and it’d be enough.

He’s slowly learning all the things Stiles likes, the right ways to push and coax him so he lets himself get lost in it, takes what he wants and accepts what he needs. So that when he smiles it’s real and not that slippery, unfinished mask that scares Scott more than anything. He can’t predict the times when Stiles will cling to him like muscle on bone versus when he won’t want to be touched at all, so he waits, and Stiles shows him with raw and lingering looks, with careful touches that Scott thinks should be leaving words behind, trails of ink. Some of them would spell out unnecessary apologies, some of them would probably be promises or questions, things that maybe there aren’t words for. Things that don’t need words to begin with, not with them.

It's so easy to get Stiles hard, make him squirm and curse like he can't stand how much he wants it, smear precome all over his stomach and leak down over his balls. Scott’s hooked on how Stiles sounds when Scott sucks him, the little tentative pushes into his mouth and the flutter of his hands against the sides of Scott’s head, fingers tightening in his hair. He’s proud of himself every time he gets Stiles to _take_ something, to press his thumbs against the corners of Scott’s jaw and work his dick deeper, when he blurts Scott’s name in little sharp pants and whines, always so responsive. Stiles holds himself open, hands gripped tight on his ass with his face mashed into the sheets while Scott rims him. Scott licks and mouths and rubs with stubble until Stiles’ hole is sloppy and swollen, the skin bright pink, watches the shivers flowing down Stiles’ back and listens to the mumbled words getting smothered into the pillows, until Stiles is coming with a full-body quake from Scott’s tongue curling into him and Scott jerks himself the three, four strokes before he’s striping the meat of Stiles’ ass, the small of his back, watching it run down the cleft, shuddering at how Stiles smells with both their come on him.

Stiles flies between wanting and not wanting control, between holding Scott’s hips down while he works his mouth hot and demanding on Scott’s dick to provoking Scott with teeth on his neck and angry, sharp-edged words, not letting up until Scott finally pins him, not letting Stiles look away from him as he pushes between Stiles’ spread legs and shoves them together, kisses him gentler than he wants and makes him come, swallows his noises like they’re precious.

There are some moments he thinks Stiles’ touches are him trying to find the buttons to press or the strings to pull that will make Scott give up on him, force him to admit something he doesn’t believe and never will: that Stiles isn’t worth it. Stiles has always been good at pushing buttons, memorising soft places that cause the most hurt, Scott’s just not used to it being applied to him. So he lets Stiles’ hands and lips and teeth span his frame, waits while Stiles’ blunt nails and burning tongue find the spots that make him arch and beg, leave marks that fade between one _please_ and the next, and doesn’t point out that there’s nothing Stiles can do to change how Scott sees him, wants him, needs him. He’s doesn’t have any locks to pick or ropes to untie, no windows to break when Stiles’ fingers are the ones prying at him, moving across his body like a thief in the dark. You can’t steal what’s already yours. Stiles’ll work it out eventually, in his own time.

Every now and then Stiles’ shoulders will shake afterwards, his face hidden in Scott’s neck, hands on his arms, no tears falling but the release hitting him like a building falling down or a dam cracking. They wrap around each other, Scott quietly talking against Stiles’ hair until he falls asleep or leans away so he can kiss Scott, tender as a bruise. Apologies and promises. And love too, underneath all of it, so much that it’s bigger than the space in Scott’s chest where he keeps it, wider than the hands he uses to show it, sturdier than his back where he’s shored it up over them like a bridge or a ladder to somewhere safe.

“I’ve got you,” he reminds Stiles over and over, the other side to what Stiles told him not that long ago, no matter how long ago it feels now. “I’ve got you.” A lot of nights he falls asleep with it still on his lips.

-|-

On the first Friday night of the break, Scott gets up off the couch and opens the front door right before Stiles knocks.

“Hey,” Stiles says, hand hovering in the air for a second before he shrugs and drops it. He takes a step closer and kisses Scott quickly, like he’s proving a point. Scott blinks his eyes open when Stiles steps away, smiling faint and helpless. The porch light makes Stiles’ eyes look blacker and the contrast between his skin and his moles more obvious. There’s tension running through Stiles’ shoulders and nervous excitement rolling off him like the tang of metal.

“You okay?” he asks, looking over Stiles’ shoulder to the idling jeep. “Going somewhere?”

Stiles still drives around sometimes, on nights when he can’t sleep and doesn’t want to be around people. Or when he doesn’t want people to be around him. Scott used to follow him when he first found out about it, shift and run out of sight but where he could be sure Stiles was alright, just to know he was safe even if he didn’t know how to help him. He doesn’t do it as much now, and Scott doesn’t feel like he needs to check on him when he does. Stiles always comes home again.

“I’m not,” Stiles says, and then gestures between them. “ _We_ are. It’s a surprise.”

“A surprise?”

“A good one,” Stiles adds quickly. “Not our usual, oh-god-we’re-all-gonna-die or hey-monsters-are-real sort of surprise. I promise.” He draws an X over his chest.

“I’m not really ready to go anywhere,” Scott says, looking down at his bare feet, his old sweatpants with the hole in the knee and the tank top that should probably have gone in the laundry yesterday.

Stiles shrugs. “You can change if you want. Hey, yeah, you should change. I’ll watch. Supervise.” He waggles his eyebrows.

Scott snorts. “And you’re not gonna tell me where we’re going?”

“That would sort of defeat the whole surprise element, wouldn’t it?” Stiles says, stepping into the house when Scott moves out of the way.

“But it’s nothing bad?” Scott asks, letting Stiles herd him upstairs into his room. Stiles sighs over his shoulder at Scott while he digs through draws for a pair of jeans.

“No, Scott, it’s nothing bad. Would I personally deliver you into danger like that? Knowingly I mean. Uh. Deliberately. Okay never mind. You’ll like it, and that’s all I’m allowed to tell you.”

He strips out of his sweats and pulls on the jeans, only a little delayed by Stiles groping his ass. Stiles throws a plaid shirt at him that Scott’s pretty sure isn’t his, and then Stiles is pulling him back downstairs and out of the house. He tries texting Kira to see if she knows what’s going on, but Stiles catches him and grabs his phone, so he just gives up and slumps harder into the passenger’s seat.

“Patience, young Skywalker,” Stiles says when Scott can’t help trying to guess what’s happening.

“You know I still haven’t seen that, right?”

Stiles waves a hand. “Eh, but you got the reference, so I’ll let it slide for now. Oh and hey, we’re here.”

Scott looks out the window, then at Stiles. “Lydia’s house? You couldn’t tell me we were going to Lydia’s house?”

“Nope,” Stiles says with a grin, popping the last syllable like a bubble. “I had strict instructions. That I’m sure I was totally expected to ignore, so I decided to follow them to the letter. Sometimes it’s good to mess with people’s expectations.”

“Right,” Scott says slowly. “So are we going in? You’re not gonna make me shut my eyes now are you?”

Stiles shrugs. “Thought about it, but then I figured, y’know, werewolf, so I’d probably also have to put earmuffs on you and give you nose plugs if I really wanted to maintain the secrecy, and I didn’t think your cooperation would extend that far.”

“Probably not,” Scott agrees, and Stiles nods, smiles like _what can you do?_

“So, yeah, we should go in,” Stiles says, but when Scott reaches for the door handle Stiles’ hand grabs his shoulder and tugs him back around.

“Forgot something,” Stiles mutters, and leans over to kiss him, eyes already closed when they make contact. His hand goes to the back of Scott’s head and Scott opens up for the flick of Stiles’ tongue, hums when Stiles tugs at his lip with his teeth, the sharp jolt running through him.

“You could’ve just done that back at my house,” Scott says, leaning their foreheads together. “I wouldn’t have asked any questions.”

“I’ll remember that,” Stiles murmurs, hand on Scott’s neck, thumb stroking behind his ear. Scott kisses him again, and when they lean away from each other Stiles is flushed down his neck, the smell of arousal clouding the space. He shakes himself. “Okay, c’mon, we’re going off the plan and I’m gonna get the blame.” He fumbles for the door and more or less falls out of the jeep, somehow landing on his feet and straightening up, turning to give Scott an expectant look. Stiles has his own variety of grace that would probably never work for anyone else.

The air’s cold, but it’s a clear night, just the stars and the inky sky like a blanket prickled with holes. The moon’s not full, so he doesn’t turn to try and find it, doesn’t follow the pull that’s always there, shifting like a tide. Stiles walks up to him and Scott stops looking at the stars.

He can hear music as they walk up to the door, and voices: Lydia’s, Kira’s. A little effort and he finds three familiar heartbeats. Stiles keeps a hand on his shoulder and gives him a look with a wink as he knocks on the door.

It’s Kira who answers, smiling at them. “Hey,” she says, ushering them in.

“Hey,” Scott says, smiling back. “So what’s going on? Am I allowed to know yet?”

Kira looks at Stiles, makes an impressed face. “Wow, so you really didn’t tell him.”

“Oh ye of absolutely no faith at all,” Stiles says. “And it wasn’t easy, okay? He’s like a kid trying to work out what his presents are before he’s allowed to open them.”

“I’m getting presents?” Scott asks, and Stiles snorts, claps him on the back. Kira waves them into the living room.

“Tada!” Stiles says before Scott’s really registered anything. There’s food and drinks and music playing. Lydia’s pouring wine into a glass and Malia’s on the couch with a plate in her lap.

“It’s… a party,” he says, looking between them all.

“It’s a _surprise_ party,” Stiles tells him. He turns to Lydia. “Which I kept totally and completely secret. So you owe me an apology and however much money you bet Kira I couldn’t keep my mouth shut.”

“It was twenty bucks,” Kira says, walking past them and grabbing a drink. She holds out a hand to Lydia. “And it’s mine now.” Lydia sighs and hands her a twenty. Stiles looks like he can’t decide if he’s affronted they really bet on him or pleased that Kira was on his side.

“And it’s not a party,” Lydia says, gesturing at Stiles with her glass. “It’s a… a small gathering of friends. Since the last time I threw a party here I got manipulated into poisoning everyone and ended up resurrecting Peter Hale, I refuse to call this a party.” She sniffs and looks around. “Besides if this was a party it’d just be sad. There are _five_ people here.”

Stiles shrugs. “There’s food. And booze. And music. The term ‘party’ seems okay to me.”

Lydia arches an eyebrow. “Which explains so much about your social status.”

“Anyway,” Kira breaks in. “We just wanted to do something all together before the holiday when we’re all off doing our own stuff.” She looks at Scott. “And we kept it a surprise as kind of a thank you for—for everything, I guess.”

“Being an awesome alpha,” Stiles says, grinning at him. “Doing the whole rallying the troops thing so we all don’t die.”

“They don’t sell banners that say that,” Lydia mutters under her breath.

“Or Hallmark cards,” Stiles adds. “I thought about having one made.”

“This is—” Scott starts, has to swallow. There’s some kind of weight falling onto its side in his chest, a lump in his throat. “You guys are amazing.”

“It was Kira’s idea,” Malia says, pulling the last bits of meat off a chicken wing.

“Oh, Lydia did most of the actual work,” Kira says quickly. “I just thought it’d be a good idea to, you know, enjoy ourselves a little. Blow off some steam.”

Malia shrugs at her. “Still your idea.”

Scott walks over and hugs Kira, still not trusting his voice for more than a muttered _thank you_. She grins at him, gets him a drink, and he ends up talking to her for a while about her plans for the break, how things are getting better with her mom as they find a new balance.

He glances around the room, watching Stiles talk quickly and animated to Malia, Lydia smiling at whatever Malia says back almost as much as she rolls her eyes at Stiles.

“This was a great idea,” he says, Kira following his look over at the others.

“Well it was a group effort,” she says, and then laughs when he does. “I might’ve started it. Doing it as a surprise for you, I mean. We all pitched in with the rest.”

“Best surprise I can remember,” he tells her.

She nudges him. “Could be the first trick I’ve played.”

They sit around and work their way through the food, talking and laughing. Scott can’t help comparing it to the last time they did something like this, after Allison’s funeral, like x-rays before and after, looking at where the break used to be. Maybe it’s still there. Maybe it’ll heal and they’ll end up stronger.

Malia’s swaying a little in time to the music, drinking something out of a tall glass that smells sugary and alcoholic.

“Does that actually do anything for you?” he asks. It’d be weird if werewolves can’t get drunk but werecoyotes can, but then it’s all weird to one degree or another.

“Not really,” she shrugs. “But I like the taste.” She holds the glass out and he thinks _why not_ , takes a sip then pulls a face. She laughs at him and he hands the glass back, the taste lingering as something sickly in his mouth. "Reminds me of these fermented apples I used to find."

“Fermented apples?”

She nods. “And watermelons, but I think those were in somebody's garden; there was a lot of sharp wire when I went back the next year.”

He lets himself drift out of the conversation, sitting back and watching them all. When Stiles slips out Scott waits a few minutes and goes to check on him. Stiles is outside, standing by the pool. The lights are out, so the pool is just a shifting dark, deep purple and smelling faintly of chlorine. Stiles has his hands in his pockets and he’s looking down into the water. Scott stands next to him, trying to see what Stiles sees, but he only sees the pool.

“Cold out here,” he says idly after half a minute.

Stiles shrugs, barely. “Needed some air.” Scott listens to his heart beating, steady like a clock ticking round and round.

“Want me to go?”

Stiles looks at him, face turned silver and shadowy, mouth quirking on one side. “No,” he says, quiet. He sighs, rolls his shoulders, hands coming out of his pockets. “Let’s go back inside.”

“You sure?”

Stiles huffs, steps closer to him, puts his hands on Scott’s shoulders. “Scott, moon of my life, my sun and stars… would you stop worrying so freaking much?” he says, mock-annoyed, jostling him with every other word, and Scott snorts, drops his head so his chin’s on his chest, like he’s waving a white flag. It’d be nice, wouldn’t it? Stiles ruffles his hair. “Always taking care of people," he sighs when Scott raises his head. “You know the whole point of this shindig was us thanking you – trying to get you to take a night off, right?” He squeezes Scott’s shoulders. “Who’s taking care of you, huh?”

“I'm fine,” Scott tells him, no thought behind it at all. The words are just there, pre-packaged in his mouth. He wishes he could go back and say _you are_ , wishes he could do it all again. He’d do it all again if he could.

Stiles shakes his head, looks up into the sky then at Scott with a wry kind of smile. “Right. You know it’s okay to not be fine though, yeah? To stop and take a breath, even if it’s just for one night?”

“Yeah,” he nods. “I know.” That weight in his chest is toppling again, dragging fragile things with it, kicking up grit and sand that rubs behind his eyes and between his fingers.

“And you know I'm here for you,” Stiles says. “For when you're not trying to be fine. Not going anywhere. Staying right here. I shall not be moved. I’m a permanent fixture. They can put those little velvet ropes around me and I’ll get a plaque and—”

Scott laughs. “I get it. Thanks. And since it’s my party, can we both go back inside, maybe dance a little?”

“Hey, you’re the alpha,” Stiles says, stepping up against him, one arm dropping and the other sliding around his back.

“Don’t think I haven't noticed you only use that when you agree to things you were gonna do anyway,” he says as they walk up away from the pool, up the steps and into the house, falling perfectly into step like they always have.

Stiles nods. “Yep. Makes you feel better though, doesn’t it?”

-|-

It’s close to two in the morning when they get back to Scott’s.  Stiles parks the jeep outside, and the quiet when he shuts off the engine is like a lid closing on the box they’re in, makes their breathing and the swirl of blood through them seem louder.

“You have fun?” Stiles asks, hands resting on the wheel, fingers tapping in slow waves.

“Yeah,” Scott says, resting back against his seat, watching Stiles bite his lip. “Yeah I did.” Stiles nods, smiles, small and real. “You’re coming in, right?”

“Duh,” Stiles says, already opening his door.

When he gets out, Stiles nudges him back against the jeep, feet slotting between his until their chests brush together. Stiles kisses him slowly, hands braced either side of Scott’s head, enclosing him while he parts Scott’s lips, sucks at his tongue until Scott’s groaning. Stiles makes a low sound like a laugh and fits them together, pushes so Scott can feel him hard against his hip.

“We—we should go inside,” Scott says while Stiles is nosing under his jaw, scenting him, a hint of teeth under his chin.

Stiles stays pressed to his back all the way to the door, rubs against his ass while he fumbles with the key, breathing hot against Scott’s nape and sending shivers down to the small of his back. They fall through the door and Stiles shoves him back against it, hands on Scott’s hips pushing his tank top up.

“S’your night,” Stiles says, mouth sucking at the pulse in Scott’s neck. “You should tell me what you want.”

Scott can barely think with Stiles’ voice buzzing through him, but he arches his back to press them together, lets Stiles tug the plaid shirt down his arms and drop it on the floor. “This,” he says, swallowing. “You. Like this. Stiles.”

Stiles hums, ducking his head to bite at Scott’s collarbone, hips rolling and hands gripping Scott’s sides. “Want me to get you off right here? Against the door?”

He shakes his head in a sharp jerk. “Bed,” he says. He blinks, doesn’t know when he grabbed onto Stiles’ shirt. “I want—will you.” He swallows, feels like his head’s been filled of cotton with how Stiles smells. “Will you fuck me?” As soon as it leaves his mouth the _need_ really hits him, dick twitching in his jeans, belly flooding hot.

Stiles goes still, moves back enough to look into Scott’s face, eyes boring into him. “You sure?” he asks, licking his lips. His scent’s spiking sharply. “Scott you gotta be sure before you tell me you—”

“I’m sure,” he says. “I want it.” He uses his shoulders to push away from the door, arms around Stiles’ waist while he kisses him, pulls Stiles’ bottom lip between his teeth. “It’s my night, right?”

Stiles’ throat rolls as he swallows, breath scattering against Scott’s cheek. “Hell yeah,” he says in a rush. Scott laughs when Stiles wraps a hand around his arm and starts towards the stairs. It takes them a while to make it all the way up, touching and kissing, not wanting to separate enough to walk any faster. His bedroom door bangs against the wall when Stiles shoulders it open, and they bounce when they fall onto the bed. Scott rolls Stiles under him, hands on Stiles’ back under his shirt, feeling his shoulders flex when he grinds down, running them down to his ass to pull him closer.

He lies back and lets Stiles strip them both, watching his fingers and the way he bites his lip, skin tingling everywhere Stiles touches him. Stiles’ heart is drumming so fast Scott can barely pick out the spaces between the beats, and his breath catches when he pulls Scott’s underwear down his legs and his dick slaps against his belly, flushed dark and wet at the tip.

“God, Scott,” Stiles mutters, quiet enough Scott’s not sure he was meant to hear it. Stiles is just as hard, kneeling on the bed between Scott’s legs with his dick curving up tight to his body, the blush on his neck that’s spread right down his chest. He’s looking at Scott like he can’t decide what to do, then he snaps back to himself with a lunge at the bedside drawer, just managing not to fall off the bed as he gets the lube.

Scott watches Stiles fumble with the cap before he reaches out and snags the bottle. He pours way too much out onto Stiles’ hand, slicks his fingers, gets it on the sheets, snaps the bottle closed and drops it on the bed next to him.

Stiles uses his other hand to push Scott flat to the bed again. “Okay, okay. Who’s running this show, huh?” He’s back in the space between Scott’s legs, spreading him wider. “You sure you wanna be on your back?”

“Yeah,” Scott nods, fingers curling into the mattress. “Yeah, c’mon, you can—like this.” His hips twitch almost off the bed when Stiles’ fingers trail down his skin, over his balls and his taint, between his cheeks to his hole.

He groans when Stiles curls one long finger into him, a slow-steady push until Stiles’ knuckles are pressed to his skin. It’s weird at first, the slick pressure, feeling full already even though it’s not that much, nowhere close to the thickness of Stiles’ dick. The thought makes him shudder, arch, and Stiles is swearing under his breath as he rubs around Scott’s hole with another finger.

The second one stretches him, burns and then turns into an ache in his stomach, the fullness dropping into a greedy hum of _not enough not enough_.

“Fuck,” Stiles hisses, and Scott looks at his face, watching Stiles staring down at where he’s got two fingers twisting up into Scott, the wet squelching sound of all that lube that might be funny if he could breathe enough to laugh. “Can’t believe you’re letting me do this,” Stiles says, shaky, thin, his heart tap-tap-tapping away, and Scott has to swallow before he can talk.

“Anything,” he says, and Stiles pauses, a stutter in the rhythm he’s using to work Scott open, breath caught in his chest. Then he’s pushing deeper, spreading his fingers a little, and Scott can’t hold his head up or keep his eyes open. Stiles rubs against his prostate, tugs on his hole until Scott’s leaking precome in a sticky puddle on his stomach.

“Still so tight,” Stiles says, like he’s talking to himself, all wrapped up in what he’s doing, the slow in and out that’s taking Scott apart, squeezing Scott’s hip with his other hand like he’s trying to pull Scott further onto him.

“Nobody’s—fuck—nobody’s ever done this to me before,” Scott manages to say, back bowing up and hips squirming down, trying to get more. Stiles hand flies off his hip and wraps around the base of his own dick, body curling over like a leaf.

“Fuck, dude, you—you need to not be saying stuff like that while I’m—god, just don’t.” He hooks a third finger past Scott’s rim and little white lights dance in front of his face until Scott remembers air is a thing he needs.

“Stiles,” he whines. “Just—c’mon.” He presses at the backs of Stiles’ thighs with his heels, closes him inside the spread of his legs. “Do it, c’mon.”

“You sure?” Stiles asks, swallowing, blinking down at him dark-eyed and with his mouth bitten red.

He nods against the sheets, breathes out, “Yeah. I want it. Wanna feel it when you do it.” He should’ve said that before. He wants the ache, wants to feel like Stiles is making a space just for himself inside him, along with all the ones that are already there. “You won’t hurt me.” _And I’d let you anyway._ “Please.”

Stiles’ fingers slide out of him, and he can feel where he’s been stretched, open and gaping just a little, the shock of the air racing up to the base of his skull. Stiles’ slippery fingers fumble at the condom wrapper, and he shuts his eyes as he rolls it on, panting loud while he slicks himself. He leans over Scott, braced on one hand, and Scott puts his hands on Stiles’ arms, his sides, whatever he can reach.

The push of Stiles’ dick into him sets him on fire, makes him feel thin and hollow, his mouth open and his head flung back and his hands slapping down against the mattress because he doesn’t know if he can keep his claws in. For a second he can’t find Stiles’ heartbeat, can’t hear anything at all, every sense narrowed down to the way he’s being stretched, Stiles slotting deeper inch by inch. Then it all pours back in at once, the world tipped over and emptied onto him.

“Oh my god, Scott,” Stiles is saying, over and over, hunched down over him with his expression blown apart, little shivers of his hips like he can’t stop himself. “Scott. _Scott_ , oh my god.”

He can’t speak, so he digs his heels into Stiles’ legs again, groans and rolls his hips down into Stiles’ next thrust, the shove of Stiles’ dick forcing the air out of his lungs and more heat up his spine, sweat rolling down from his temples and sticking the sheets to his back.

Stiles buckles almost on top of him, one hand skidding on the bed and the other like a vice on Scott’s thigh, face buried in the crook of Scott’s neck as he rolls his hips, pulls out and rocks back in again.

He lets himself put his hands on Stiles’ back, stroke down between his shoulders, just holding on, spread out and taking it, little grunts and whines getting knocked loose every time Stiles’ hips meet his ass. His dick’s trapped between them, hard and getting precome on Stiles’ stomach, the not-enough rub against him when Stiles moves sending tingles up his sides and down his arms, toes curling into the bed.

Stiles’ mouth latches onto his jaw, raw and helpless noises coming from the back of his throat. His knees are slipping on the sheets and his hips are snapping into Scott harder, sharper, more and more jerky, not even pulling out now, just grinding against him, their bodies pressed flush together and the fat head of Stiles’ cock jammed into his prostate. Scott grips the back of Stiles’ neck, strokes and tugs his hair, tries to think through the blurry red haze and the urge to grip down on Stiles’ dick, keep him there, or shove him onto his back and ride him, take what he wants.

The sounds Stiles is making are turning wet, pained and desperate. His hands are clawing Scott’s shoulders, teeth pinching hard at his skin, hips jabbing rough into him, making his dick slap on his stomach. Scott hauls him up, fingers on Stiles’ throat and braced against his chest.

“Let it go,” he says, feeling his eyes turn red, staring into Stiles’ face. “Stiles, let it go.” He doesn’t know if Stiles can even hear him, can barely imagine how loud all that blood roaring in his must be. “ _Stiles_ ,” he says again, this time in a different voice that’s barely human, holding Stiles against him with his legs crossed near the small of Stiles’ back, against his ass. Stiles is bowstring taut all over, veins standing out in his temples and his neck, raised like scars against Scott’s fingers.

Stiles’ face screws up as he comes, Scott gripping his neck and not letting him pull away, not letting him hide. There are tears in Stiles’ lashes that fall along with the sweat onto Scott’s skin, mouth hanging open and flecked with red where he’s bitten through his lip. Stiles slips out of him, making Scott wince, and he rolls them over, gets Stiles underneath him, kisses him, laps away the specks of blood and wipes his thumbs under Stiles’ eyes, along his cheeks, touches him until Stiles looks less distant.

He grabs Stiles’ wrists, gathers them up into his hands and holds them over his head as he grinds down against Stiles’ belly, his hips, strings of precome connecting them, thumbs pressing into Stiles’ pulse points. He comes with his mouth on Stiles’, hot splashes up Stiles’ stomach and chest that get smudged clingy and filthy between them.

“I love you. I mean, I’m _in_ love with you. Both of those,” he says, in a tangled rush of breath that can’t get out of his mouth fast enough, hurls itself free like a bird taking off. He’s been waiting weeks, months. He’s been waiting more than twelve years and he’s been saying it all along too. God, he’s so tired of waiting.

Stiles is blinking up at him, open-mouthed and shocky-looking, totally still except for the twitching pulse in his neck and the fluttery up-and-down of his ribs. He looks actually, honestly surprised, and Scott almost laughs because _doesn’t he know?_

Some things don’t require belief.

“I love you,” he says again, noses along Stiles’ cheek, kisses him gently, slowly. Stiles nods, eyes damp. He lets go of Stiles’ wrists and Stiles puts his hands on Scott’s shoulders, rubs them down his sides. They lie on their sides, and Scott dozes while Stiles moves to clean up, rubs a washcloth over Scott’s belly and gets rid of the condom. The bed dips when Stiles climbs back in next to him. Scott puts an arm over him, curls towards him with his nose against Stiles’ shoulder. It’ll be dawn soon.

-|-

Scott’s not sure what wakes him up, whether it’s his hand moving over the empty side of the bed or the sound of Stiles getting dressed in the hall, but he’s following Stiles downstairs before he’s aware of deciding to move at all, grabbing the pair of sweats he’d changed out of earlier off the floor and pulling them on as he goes.

Stiles is in the living room, just sort of standing there, facing the door. He looks like a clockwork figure somebody forgot to wind. He turns and looks at Scott before Scott’s managed to think of anything to say.

“Didn’t mean to wake you up,” he says, and it’s the tone that Scott hears more than the words, the guilt and the wariness badly hidden under the scraped-flat way he sounds.

“Just to sneak out,” Scott says, harsher than he meant to but not being able to help it. “Stiles, what’s going on?”

Stiles rubs a hand across his face, winces as he says, “Scott, I—I don’t know if we should do this again.”

It might be because he’s not completely awake, or because a big part of him is just refusing to accept what this looks like, but the surprise at hearing Stiles say it hits him in the stomach so hard it sends him back a step. “What? You’re—what?”

Stiles’ hands ball at his sides. He turns on the spot and then back again. “You remember when I made you promise not to let me hurt anyone else?”

Scott frowns. “What does that have to do with—”

“You didn’t think I was including you in that?” Stiles asks, with a little cracked-high noise that isn’t a laugh, that would probably scare real laughter out of the air like birds flying from the sound of a gunshot. “God, Scott, I especially meant you.”

He shakes his head. “You’re not gonna hurt me. Why would you hurt me?”

Stiles’ arms fly up, fingers spanning out. “Because I see how hard you’re trying to hold it all together, alright? I see how you’re almost killing yourself making sure I’m—making sure we’re _all_ in one piece. Never mind that you look like you’re gonna pass out half the time, and believe me, I know from exhausted. Exhausted and me are like _this_.” He holds up a hand with two fingers crossed over each other, and then drops his arms to his sides, palms clapping against his thighs. He sniffs, pulls his lips between his teeth. “Scott, you—you’re pretty much the most important thing there is. You’re right up there on the list of—of vital fucking things, okay? And I know you, like you know me, and you _can’t_ lose anyone else. You just can’t. It’ll ruin you.” There’s a stumble at the end that makes it sound like _I’ll ruin you_.

Stiles’ heart is pounding, so loud Scott might not even need werewolf hearing to pick up on it. His breathing’s shallow and his scent’s shifted towards something like burning paper, all red hot and crumbling black around the edges.

“Stiles, you—” he starts, swallowing, trying to think of something, but Stiles holds a hand up and barrels right over him.

“What happens if we keep doing this,” Stiles says, gesturing between them and talking even faster than before, a runaway edge to it that makes Scott even more nervous, “and something happens to me, huh? Again, I mean. What if I get hurt, or taken, or y’know, torn into a thousand fucking pieces or something?” Scott can’t hide the flinch, and Stiles’ expression gets pointed, cruel in a _gotcha_ sort of way. “Scott, I—I want this, okay? God, you’ve gotta know I do, but I _can’t_ —” he clenches his jaw so tightly Scott actually hears the grind of his teeth. He blinks and a wet-bright streak rolls down his face that he can’t smear away with his hand fast enough. He looks back at Scott and it’s like seeing him from the other side of an ocean. He might as well be watching Stiles through a telescope for all the distance stuffed into the two or three steps of carpet between them. “Any more loss and you’ll—Scott, I can’t be that selfish, no matter how much I want to. I can’t be the one who crushes you. Not after everything I’ve already done.” He’s biting out every word with such a tight grip on his voice Scott can see his windpipe constricting in his neck.

“You won’t,” Scott tells him, trying to attach as much weight to it as he can. He takes a step forward. “Stiles, that won’t happen.”

“You can’t know that,” Stiles blows out, just under the level of a yell. “Look at what’s happened in the last year. Look how much we lost – _who_ we lost. You don’t know what’s coming, and neither do I. I—I barely trust myself on my own, much less with you. Fuck, least of all with you. You want to save everyone except yourself, so now I’m gonna do it for you.”

“How is this better?” Scott asks, his feet carrying him another step. He doesn’t even know if Stiles has noticed him moving. “How is us choosing to not be happy any better? What was any of it for if we just stop trying? Tell me that.”

An awful sound comes out of Stiles’ mouth. If pure misery had a name or its own language, Scott thinks it would sound like that. “You think we’re gonna be happy?” Stiles asks, mouth twisted into a knife. “Seriously? I know wilful optimism is kind of your thing, Scott, but c’mon, we’re—”

“No,” Scott cuts in. He thinks he actually feels his eyes flicker red for a second, in time with the hollow bang of his heartbeat. “No. You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to just give up like that. I _need_ you to believe we can do this, that we still have a chance. How am I supposed to—you walked into a puddle of gasoline because you wouldn’t let _me_ give up, you can’t take that back now. I won’t let you.”

“Scott, Allison’s dead,” Stiles says, barely a murmur and it’s like ice, creeping up over Scott’s feet and rooting him to the floor. It’s a sword through the stomach. “You loved her too, and she was—” his expression cracks, breaks and resettles all wrong. “She was here, she was right here. We all loved her, and I was the one who—”

“You think it hurts any less?” Scott asks. “We weren’t together, Stiles. We were—even if I thought, maybe, someday, we could be that again, we weren’t. I loved her anyway, because of who she was. I still love her. It doesn’t stop, not ever, and you think it’s easier because we weren’t together when she—what the hell, Stiles?” On some level he knows he’s shaking, little rattles going from his shoulders to his limp-hanging arms. He feels cold all over but his face is burning, stuck in place like wax. He’s suddenly so, so angry, with Stiles and this whole unfair mess, with whatever’s happened to their lives that they apparently don’t even need threats from outside anymore. “Fuck you,” he says, whispering because he’s blown right past yelling, because he’s out of shouts and screams now and this is all that’s left. Sourness is creeping up his throat, and he’s pretty sure he’s about to be sick. “I _love_ you, and fuck you if you think losing you would be easier just because—if we didn’t—god, I can’t believe you’d actually think—”

“Scott,” Stiles is saying, wide-eyed, his mouth moving slowly and his voice travelling down a long tunnel. “Scott, I’m sorry, okay, I didn’t—”

“If you want to stop, fine,” Scott tells him, somehow making the words leave his throat even though he’s been gutted and turned inside-out. “If you really don’t…want me, I’ll live with it. If you’re not in the right place, I won’t push you, you _know_ I won’t. You can say no to anything, but you don’t get to say it because you think it makes it _easier_ for me, or because you’re scared of what might happen later. That’s not fair. You can’t—it’s not fucking fair, Stiles.” His eyes feel like he’s got sand in them, and he’s clenching his fists so tight his fingers have gone numb. When he speaks he hates the way it sounds, grating like an out of tune instrument. “We’re allowed to be happy. God, we’re supposed to be happy, even if it doesn’t last. It’s worth it, okay? It is. You’re—” The words in his head sound nothing like what reaches his ears. His voice doesn’t even sound like a voice, wrenched out of joint and bent back on itself. He’s blinking but still can’t focus, his chest constricting and his head pounding.

The next thing he feels is Stiles shaking him, hands on his shoulders. He’s right there now, sudden as a bone snapping, all that distance folded together so Scott’s looking up into Stiles’ face, flushed and with tears clinging to his chin and his nose running. Air pries his throat open and his head’s pounding.

“—on, Scott, you’ve gotta breathe, please, c’mon—”

Scott grabs a hold of Stiles by the shirt, two fistfuls that turn into handholds when he notices how rubbery his knees are, how far away from him his feet have gotten. It hurts to breathe like it used to before, except Stiles isn’t pressing his inhaler at him now.

He says, “Stiles,” with the little bit of air that’s in his lungs. “What.”

Stiles sighs so hard he bends at the waist a little. “You’re okay.” He still doesn’t sound convinced. “You had what looked like two or three anxiety attacks in about thirty seconds flat. I’d be impressed if it wasn’t completely terrifying. Your head hurt?”

Scott gives him a jerky nod, which is a really big mistake. He presses a damp, clammy hand to his temple and waits for everything to stop spinning. The wooziness gets worse, makes his stomach churn. He can’t remember if he threw up or not.

“Yeah,” Stiles says, still holding onto him with a hand on Scott’ shoulder, his other one rubbing Scott’s back. The steady sweep of Stiles’ hand over his spine is the only good feeling in the narrow cone of what Scott can see and feel. “Take it easy. Fuck, I thought you were gonna faint, start stealing my thunder.”

He lets Stiles heave him over to the couch, puts his head in his hands and wills his body to fix itself, for this to be a thing that _can_ be fixed. Stiles kneels in front of him; Scott can see him in the blurry edges of his vision, pale and worried.

Out of nowhere, it seems like, the smell of blood worms into his nose.

“Stiles,” he croaks, going cold again in a flash, hair on his arms rising. “Where are you bleeding? Did I—”

“Yeah, that’s not me,” Stiles says, reaching out to grab Scott’s wrist. He pulls Scott’s hand down in front of him and turns it over. There are no marks, but there are little trails of sticky blood drying on his palm and between his fingers.

“Oh,” is all he can say, looking at his other hand. It’s the same story: blood that’s starting to flake and peel, thick squeezed-out trails at either side of his palm and all over his fingers. He looks down and there’s red staining his sweats and spotting the floor where he must have been standing. He didn’t even notice his claws coming out.

“Sorry,” he says, and Stiles sighs again, squeezes his hand.

“Pretty sure that’s my line. God, I think I just aged three decades. Let’s just not do that again, ever, okay?”

Scott looks up, even though his head feels heavy. “The fighting or the panicking?”

“The fighting,” Stiles says with a tired snort. “Safe to say there’ll always be more panicking. I’ll make a rota. We can take turns. I’m up next.” He rubs at his face. “Wow so I shouldn’t have said… all that crap I just said. I’m an asshole.”

“Was it?” Scott asks, needing to know and not wanting to know at the same time, still falling off that cliff. “Crap?”

Stiles’ hand fits over his knee, fingertips digging in the edges of the cap of bone. “I’m probably gonna do my best to mess this up,” he says, mouth flattened into a sad little smile. “But if you promise to, I don’t know, knock me in the head once in a while? Preferably before you nearly pass out and get blood on your mom’s floor, then…” He huffs, the smile becoming a little more real, stretching at the corners. He leans up enough to touch his lips to Scott’s, drops back onto his haunches. “I’m assuming you’re still on board with this?” he says, a joke wrapped tissue paper thin around a real question, and god, Scott’s just never going to completely convince him, is he?

“I don’t know, you should probably kiss me again,” Scott tells him. “Just to be sure.”

It takes a second, but the relief catches and the grin takes over Stiles’ whole face, blinding bright. There’s probably blood smeared in messy patches on Scott’s face, but Stiles’ fingers brush his cheekbone and his hand cups Scott’s jaw anyway, makes it easier to slide their mouths together, warm and sweet. If Scott wasn’t sure about his heart before, it’s definitely beating right now.

“Think we should go get you cleaned up,” Stiles says, one thumb brushing over the rusty lines on Scott’s hand and the other making little circles at his temple. “I’m not letting you feel me up when you look like you just walked off the set of a slasher movie.”

“You love it,” Scott mutters absently as Stiles helps him onto his feet, trying to get his grip back on the way things work, waiting for the lingering fear to wear off. “Makes me look dangerous.”

“Whatever you wanna tell yourself, dude,” Stiles says, arm around Scott’s middle like there’s still a chance Scott’s gonna pass out. He pulls it tighter across him anyway. “But your mom is still gonna kill you for getting blood everywhere.”

“You’ll just have to protect me,” Scott says as they get to the stairs.

Stiles rolls his eyes, all put-upon and _the things I do for you_.

“Well that’s my job, after all,” he says. “It’s in the best friend-turned-mythical-creature-turned-boyfriend contract. Gotta read that fine print.”

“Boyfriend huh?” Scott says, grinning and waggling his eyebrows, glad his headache’s mostly gone. He feels heavy in his limbs, wants to sleep, but he’s not sure he’ll be able to. He wants to keep this feeling, this one thing if nothing else. He doesn’t know if he’ll be allowed in the long run, so he clings to it harder and values it more, even if it’s the last gasp of air before they sink.

“Oh god, shut up,” Stiles mutters, and Scott lets him shove him the whole way upstairs, trusting Stiles’ hands on his back to catch him if he falls.

-|-

He sits on the end of his bed, elbows on his knees. His hands are clean and dry now, but he keeps rubbing them together anyway. Stiles stands in front of him, down to just his briefs again like he wants to prove that he’s not leaving, and Scott reaches out, fingers moving lightly along the skin of Stiles’ belly, just above the scar that runs from one side to the other. It’s the only scar he’s got now; all the others, from when they were kids right up to the moment the nogitsune almost gutted him, are gone. It seems cruel, that he still has that one but he lost the ones from his mom teaching him to ride a bike and from Scott accidentally knocking him off the slide at recess and from—

“Hey,” Stiles says softly, and Scott jumps, pulls his hand back and leans away. He doesn’t know how long he was staring at the raised line of pink skin on Stiles’ stomach.

“Sorry,” he mutters, “I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s okay,” Stiles tells him, even though he’s taking obviously careful, measured breaths. “It’s just kinda… weird. Sensitive, I guess. I don’t really touch it much.” He makes a gesture at Scott’s hand, and when Scott holds it out Stiles takes it and puts it back on his stomach, his palm on the back of Scott’s, covering the middle of the scar. They’re back to promises and apologies, he thinks, not totally sure which they’re on right now. He can feel the movement of Stiles’ breathing, the twitch of muscle under his hand.

“Come lay down,” he says, voice tilting close to a question, a plea. He shuffles up the bed towards the pillows, and Stiles follows him, hand on Scott’s side or his leg so they don’t lose contact. They lie facing each other, and Scott puts an arm over Stiles’ waist, tangles their legs up.

He waits for Stiles to meet his eyes, tells him, “I meant what I said earlier.” It feels almost like defiance, but he couldn’t say of what.

Stiles swallows. His head makes a shuffing sound against the pillow as he nods. “I know,” he says. “And… me too, okay? I just—you deserve—”

“You,” Scott says, because with Stiles’ expression all frozen up and the way he’s looking anywhere but at Scott’s face now, nothing good was gonna happen at the end of that sentence. He puts his hand on Stiles’ cheek, thumb stroking back and forth until Stiles eventually lets his eyes stop on Scott’s face. “I deserve you,” he says, solid as stone. “And you deserve me.” He smiles and puts a lot of effort into stopping it from wobbling. “How many people have told us we deserve each other?”

Stiles snorts, a ragged little puff of air that Scott can feel. “Not sure they meant it like this.”

He shrugs, or something close to a shrug while he’s lying on his side. His hand’s still on Stiles’ cheek. “Same difference. I want this – you. When we’re in trouble and saving each other’s lives. When we’re all together and when it’s just us, like it used to be. Always, whatever else happens.” He smiles again, firmer this time. “I never cared how, so long as I had you.” He brushes the edge of Stiles’ jaw. “C’mon, you’re stuck with me. Live with it.”

“Fine,” Stiles says with a shaky laugh, totally sounding like he’s fighting back tears too, so at least they’re in the same boat. “I can—uh.” He blows a breath out through his mouth and tries again. “I’m definitely on board with that – with everything, all that great stuff you just said.” He swallows and smiles, watery. “Sorry I freaked out and uh, kind of ruined the moment.”

The sound that Scott makes is too messy to be a laugh, raw relief and bits of a sob and _please don’t let me screw this up_ all mixed together.

“It’s okay,” he tells says, leaning in to kiss Stiles’ mouth, his cheek, under his jaw. “There’ll be lots of other moments.”

“Promise?” Stiles says, in a voice like he was aiming for a joke and overshot it.

Scott leans up, braced on his elbow. His fingertips run through Stiles’ hair. He can’t stop touching. He doesn’t want to stop touching.

“I promise,” he says, making sure his eyes are on Stiles’. He’s not lying. This is them now, for however much time they have, and he’s gonna make sure they have a lot of it.

“Okay,” Stiles breathes. “Okay. Now, hey, c’mon, more kissing.”

They lie like that, trading soft and aimless kisses. Scott’s tired in his body, but there’s still too much ticking around in his head to let him sleep, both of them yawning but never actually drifting off. He doesn’t know what time it is now, but there’s pale bluish light coming through the window, the occasional sound of a bird. His night off’s definitely over, he thinks, and it’s almost funny. But it’s another day now, and they can start again. That’s got to count for something. Climb, fall, climb higher. Eventually they’ll get there.

“Hey Scott?” Stiles says, just above a whisper. With his face tucked down by Scott’s neck, Scott can’t see him, can only hear the little motions of him like a house settling on its foundation.

He touches his lips to Stiles’ forehead, breathing against his skin. “Yeah?” He can hear Stiles swallowing, feel the slow exhale against his throat.

“I’m still pretty scared.”

“Of what?” he asks, rubbing his foot against Stiles’, nosing along his hairline.

A minute goes by without Stiles answering. He puts his hand on Scott’s chest, palm over his heart. “Of whatever’s gonna happen next.”

It makes his chest ache hearing it as much as knowing that he can’t fix it. They’re fitted tight together but Scott can’t take any of it away, not the fear or the guilt, none of the stuff that lasts longer than the pain does. His hands rub against Stiles’ skin but really they’re sealed away inside themselves, aren’t they? Sewn up like dolls even if the stitches are frayed. The animal part of him that needs to make Stiles be okay paces, trying to claw its way out, chew through the seams.

Whatever words he’s got are too small, too flat, don’t hold enough, leave him trying to bail out an ocean with a bucket as his hands blister and the waves break him down little by little. He wants to make up the right words, big words, boat words they can float away on; clever words so he can pick their stitches open and knit them together. In the end he settles on, “I’m scared too,” and another kiss pressed to Stiles’ forehead. “But we’re gonna make it.”

Stiles’ thumb sweeps over the jut of bones in Scott’s wrist, follows his arm to the elbow, shifts it onto his hip. “That a promise too?”

“Yeah,” he murmurs, nose in Stiles’ hair, the sigh Stiles’ lets out collecting in the hollow of his neck. “Yeah, that’s a promise.”

Trouble can come in its own time, like it always does. For right now at least they’re together, and they’re in one piece, frayed or not. Scott can live in the right now and be happy, hold on to his battered hope a while longer. It’ll all work out in the end.

Some things don’t require belief.

It doesn’t hurt to believe in them anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from _Clenched Soul_ by Pablo Neruda


End file.
